


I’ve Got the Feeling You’re the Right Thing After All

by poisonivory



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Green Arrow (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends With Benefits, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Love Triangles, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:14:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivory/pseuds/poisonivory
Summary: Roy Harper adores, resents, and envies Dick Grayson in equal measure. The only one who understands is Dick's brother Jason, which is part of why he and Jason get along so well. So when Roy and Jason fall into bed together, there's no reason for them tostopgetting along. Roy can balance his friendship with Jason, his feelings for Dick, and the rising threat of a shadowy figure in Gotham's underworld without anyone getting hurt. Right?
Relationships: Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Comments: 138
Kudos: 400





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired roughly by the issues of _Red Hood: Outlaw_ where Jason takes over the Iceberg Lounge, except _Heroes in Crisis_ didn't happen and Roy is totally fine except for all his poor decision making skills. As usual, I've kept Roy's personality mostly pre-New 52.
> 
> The title is from "Real Love" by Carly Rae Jepsen. Thanks to [mizzmarvel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizzmarvel/pseuds/mizzmarvel) for the beta!
> 
> New chapters will go up on Mondays.

The car pulled to a stop in front of the pier. Way down at the other end, a fantastic structure shone in the Gotham night, all jagged frosty peaks and beams of cool blue light piercing the darkness. The Iceberg Lounge.

“You sure you want to do this?” Dick asked from the driver’s seat.

Roy didn’t bother to try to hide his eyeroll as he turned to look at his oldest friend. “Don’t start this again.”

“I’m not starting anything,” Dick said, like a liar. “I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

“Helping out my friend? Uh, yeah, I’m pretty clear on that.”

“This is a little bit more than a favor,” Dick said. “Look, I know you and two have been hanging out a lot lately, but this? This whole situation?” He waved a hand in the direction of the Iceberg Lounge. “It’s messy, and it’s gonna end badly. Just like it always does.”

“Hey, he’s _your_ brother,” Jason said.

“Yeah,” Dick said. “Which is how I know that his plans always end in blood and regret. And you...you don’t always have the best judgment when it comes to looking after yourself.”

Roy stared at Dick, feeling both incredulous and like a fucking idiot for being incredulous. Even in the darkness of the car, the earnestness on Dick’s face was clear—along with the graceful line of his jaw and the piercing, unreal blue of his eyes. He might not be expressing it well, but he was genuinely concerned about Roy. Roy wasn’t sure whether he wanted to kiss him or punch him in his perfect teeth. It was an exhaustingly familiar feeling.

He opened the door. “Just pop the fucking trunk.”

“Roy…” Dick sighed, but he popped the trunk. Roy got out and hauled his duffel bag and quiver out of the trunk, then leaned down, forearm propped on the still-open passenger door.

“Jason might be a bastard, and he might not always walk the straight and narrow, but at least he’s not constantly throwing a mistake I made when I was _sixteen_ back in my face,” he said. “Thanks for the ride, but you should probably get out of here. This isn’t a good neighborhood for Bruce Wayne’s wards to be showing their faces in. At least, not the ones he likes.”

“Come on, Roy,” Dick said. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Sure.” Roy straightened up. “I’ll tell Jason you said hi.”

He slammed the door and walked away, heading down the pier toward the nightclub. A minute later he heard the car engine start up.

This, he reminded himself, was why he didn’t hang out with the old Titans crowd too much these days if he could help it. He loved them to distraction, would happily take a bullet for each and every one of them, but god, they made him crazy. And Dick made him the craziest of all, although that hadn’t stopped him from carrying a torch for the guy for over a decade now.

Hanging out with Jason, on the other hand...sure, they might have spent their days doing morally dubious things in order to stop morally _horrifying_ things, and their nights holed up in some of the rattiest shitholes the world’s worst neighborhoods had to offer, but at least Jason didn’t keep a history of all of Roy’s fuck-ups in his back pocket. Probably because there wasn’t enough room alongside all of _Jason’s_ fuck-ups, but still.

As Roy approached the Iceberg Lounge, he wondered if he might have to reassess that ratty shithole expectation. This place was _luxe_ , the kind of club Ollie used to splash around in when Roy was a kid, before they went broke. Rox had a sudden flashback to sitting at the bar playing Gameboy and eating all the olives the bartender would give him, bored out of his mind.

The bouncer at the door gave Roy an even more contemptuous look than those long-ago bartenders had. “I’m afraid this establishment has a dress code, sir,” he said, sneering at Roy’s Jefferson Airplane T-shirt, torn jeans, and muddy boots. Probably wasn’t loving the long hair, either.

“I’m sure it does,” Roy said. “But _I’m_ afraid your boss asked for me all special-like.” He dug his wallet out of his pocket and showed his ID. “Go ahead. Call.”

The bouncer glowered at him, but pulled out his phone and dialed. “Excuse me, Ms. Su, but there’s a ‘Roy Harper’ here who claims that—” His glower deepened. “I see. Right away.” He hung up and turned the glower back on Roy. “You’re expected, Mr. Harper.”

Roy grinned at him. “I’m really not that bad once you get to know me,” he said, and sauntered into the Lounge.

It was...awfully Penguin-y inside, which wasn’t a huge surprise. Everything white and ice blue and chrome, fountains everywhere, AC cranked up just a little higher than it needed to be. There was a huge bar along one wall, which...was fine. It was a nightclub, after all. Roy had known what to expect.

He ignored the stares from the beautiful people milling around and admiring each other, and climbed the curving staircase to the upper level. Word that he was expected must have gotten around to the staff, because no one stopped him from walking down the hall and knocking on the door marked “Management.”

“Come in,” a voice called.

Roy opened the door and found himself in a sumptuous office, all mahogany and brocade and _class_ —well, except for the tacky-ass giant fish tank in the back. Once again, he was reminded of the years he’d spent in the old Queen Mansion, and remembered that Oswald Cobblepot was old money, with the same snooty, velvety tastes as Oliver Queen—or Bruce Wayne.

Luckily for him, the man standing and looking out a window overlooking the club floor was nothing like any of them.

“Jaybird!” Roy said, dropping his bag and quiver on the floor. Jason accepted a hug with a big show of being put upon, but Roy was pretty sure he caught him smiling. “What the hell, dude? Look at this place! Look at _you!_ ”

“And they say crime doesn’t pay.” Jason smoothed down his vest. It was charcoal gray, with a jet-black jacket and trousers and matching tie, and a scarlet shirt. He’d always dressed well—Jason was the only guy Roy knew who wore a blazer and dress shoes on an _airplane_ —but the three-piece suit was another level. A good one. “Thanks for coming.”

Roy shrugged. “You called.” Jason had saved his life. There wasn’t anything Roy wouldn’t do for him, and they both knew it. No need to make Jason go all squirrelly and embarrassed by saying it out loud.

Not that it wasn’t fun sometimes to make Jason go all squirrelly and embarrassed, but Roy was saving that for when it would be most entertaining.

“So how did it go with the _Teen_ Titans?” Jason drawled, leaning against the edge of his desk. “Did you braid each other’s hair and sing songs around the campfire?”

“Not sure why you think it’s summer camp,” Roy said, dropping into a chair in front of the desk. Leather. _Nice._

“Not sure why you think I don’t remember you with a guitar the one time Dick deigned to bring me to Titans Tower,” Jason replied.

“Will no one let me forget my folk music phase,” Roy asked of the ceiling. Jason kicked his ankle lightly, letting him know he hadn’t gotten away with dodging the question. “Eh. I mean. It was fine. We fought the Weather Wizard. I don’t know.”

Jason waited.

Roy sighed. “You know, every time I say something in the field, they all look at Dick to see what he thinks first? I have actually been doing this as long as he has. I know how to punch the Weather Wizard just as good as he does.”

“Hmm, being compared to Dick Grayson?” Jason asked. “What’s that like?”

Roy laughed. “Fuck you.” He felt a little bit of the frustration bleed out of him. Jason got it. Jason had _always_ gotten it, the tangle that was loving and resenting and envying Dick Grayson for being everything he never could.

He didn’t, as far as Roy knew, also want to sleep with Dick, probably because of the whole “foster brother” thing, but otherwise the parallel was close enough. They’d always just left that part of Roy’s feelings unspoken.

“I shouldn’t complain,” Roy said. “He did give me a ride out here in the Batplane. Even drove me down to the pier.”

Jason’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, I bet he loved that.”

“He thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”

The grin that spread over Jason’s face was sharp and wicked. “I am.”

“Hey, I was getting into trouble long before you came along, baby bird.”

“Oh, I know,” Jason said. “Why do you think I called you?”

“On that note…” Roy said, tilting his head to the side.

“Right.” Jason straightened up and walked back to the window, hands in his pockets. Roy followed him, and they looked down on the milling forms of the beautiful, expensive, largely terrible people below.

“I have an opportunity here,” Jason said. “This is the kind of place where deals are brokered. Exchanges are made. Lives are ruined. And now I’m in a position to know about all of it.”

“And if that mean old Red Hood somehow gets his hands on that information and uses it to crack some skulls…?” Roy offered.

“Wouldn’t that be just too bad,” Jason said. “Some of that information might even make its way to Batman. Maybe. If I feel like sharing.” The expression on his face said those odds were fairly low.

“So where do I come in?” Roy asked.

“It’s a viper’s nest down there,” Jason said. “I need someone to watch my back. Make sure no one does to me what I did to the Penguin.”

“And Kori and Artemis were both busy?” Roy guessed.

“I’m trying out this new concept I’ve heard of called ‘subtle,’” Jason said. “A six-foot-tall redheaded warrior princess bodyguard is not subtle.”

“ _I’m_ a six-foot-tall redheaded warrior princess. Well,” Roy amended. “Five eleven.”

“You’re _human_ ,” Jason said. “And you’re a much better liar than either of the girls. Bizarro too, for obvious reasons.”

“What about Suzie Su?”

“Ha,” Jason said. “I like Suzie, but I don’t trust her an inch. She’d stab me in a heartbeat if it made sense for her and her family, and good for her.”

“But you trust me?” Roy said.

Jason gave Roy a look that suggested Roy was very stupid. Entirely possible, Roy knew.

“So I _am_ your warrior princess bodyguard,” Roy said.

Jason snorted. “Please. I can _hire_ bodyguards. We were partners, right? Well…” He gestured to the floor below. “We still are.”

He looked out over his kingdom— _their_ kingdom, apparently. Roy had seen that expression before and he knew it boded ill for Jason’s subjects.

“Great,” he said. “Where do we start?”

*

They started with Candy Su spotting some trust fund douchebag selling coke out of the bathroom. Roy expected Jason to throw him out, possibly after the bouncers knocked out a tooth or two, but instead Jason threw a friendly arm around him when he made it out of the can and bought him a drink.

An hour later he and Roy were suited up and watching the douchebag hang by his ankles over Gotham Harbor, having followed the tracker Jason had planted on him at the bar. Jason had borrowed an arrow from Roy’s quiver, one of the regular sharp ones, and was using it to gently prod Trust Fund in the stomach, making him swing back and forth over the water.

“Please,” Trust Fund sobbed. His terrified eyes found Roy. “Please, don’t let him kill me.”

“Why does everyone think I’m the nice one?” Roy asked of no one in particular.

“Because you are the nice one,” Jason replied.

“Not to drug dealers I’m not.”

“I’m not a drug dealer!” Trust Fund whined. “Please, you gotta believe me, this isn’t a regular thing for me! My old man cut me off and I was just selling a little of my own supply to get some cash until I could talk him around!”

It was technically impossible to tell when Jason was smiling under that hood, but Roy always knew from his voice. “And now we come to the million dollar question,” he said. “Who do _you_ buy from?”

They walked away with a name and without any promises to call the police to come cut the douchebag down, although of course Roy did as soon as they were out of sight. “Anyone you know?” Roy asked.

“I’m seeing some repeat names,” Jason replied. “Still just middlemen, though. I haven’t gotten to the big players yet. But I’m working on the pattern.”

Jason had a penthouse apartment with that so-crucial-to-vigilantes rooftop access in one of Gotham’s ritzier, new money neighborhoods—although, Roy noted, it was nowhere near either Gotham Heights, where Wayne Manor was, or the ritzy _old_ money neighborhood where Dick lived. For a festering boil on the state of New Jersey, Gotham had a lot of ritzy neighborhoods.

Inside, the place was cold and under-furnished, but it had top of the line security, a full fridge, and, most importantly, a spare bedroom. “You don’t have to stay here if you want to get your own place,” Jason said, looking a little uncertain, which was rare for him. “But I figured, at least for the first few nights you’re in town…”

“And pay my own rent when I can get you to do it for me?” Roy asked. “Pass.”

Jason rolled his eyes, but Roy caught him smiling before he turned away.

The next day, Jason insisted on Roy going to a tailor Jason liked downtown and getting fitted for a whole new wardrobe of suits, if only to stop Tony the bouncer from having any more conniptions over Roy’s failure to comply with the dress code.

“Also,” he said, plucking the baseball cap from Roy’s head, “I’m burning this.”

“The source of my powers?” Roy asked. “Next you’ll be making me cut my hair.”

“Let’s get you in the damn suits first and take it from there.”

It was easy to fall into a routine: the Lounge in the evenings, running down leads into the wee hours, sleeping until noon, and then eating takeout and dicking around with Jason until it was time to head back to the club. It felt like old times, except for the lack of travel and the significantly higher quality of life.

Also, Jason seemed somehow more intense than usual, which was saying something. Roy wasn’t sure whether it was the responsibility of maintaining the house of cards that was the Iceberg Lounge or just being in Gotham for a prolonged period of time, but the tension was obvious in the way Jason carried himself, the way he spoke, the way his eyes sometimes tracked Roy across the floor like he needed to be on his guard.

Roy let it lie. It wasn’t like he didn’t have his own issues for Jason to politely overlook.

Jason’s tailor worked fast. Within a week, a full wardrobe was delivered to Jason’s apartment. Roy hadn’t even gotten to pick anything out; he’d just been measured and shown the door. It had felt a little tawdry, but now, fingering the exquisite wool of the first suit, it was anything but.

“This is ridiculous,” he called out of his open bedroom door as he turned up the collar of his shirt and draped a burgundy tie around his neck. The suit itself, all three pieces of it, was a subtle navy pinstripe and cut impeccably well. Without his hat, his hair had been getting into his eyes, so he’d gotten into the habit of pulling it back into a reasonably tidy bun. Overall, he hadn’t looked so polished since Ollie’d been keeping him in polo shirts and sweater vests back in the day. “You gotta let me pay you back for this, Jaybird.”

“Well, let’s see,” Jason called back from the living room, where Roy had left him communing intensely with a cup of coffee. “You draw a salary from the business I own, so you want to take some of the money I give you to give back to me?”

Roy flipped his collar down and walked into the living room, shrugging into the jacket as he went. “It’s up to you, I guess, but things are getting real _Pretty Woman_ around here. You don’t own a piano, do you?”

He grinned at Jason, but Jason just set his coffee down and stood, his face as blank as if he were wearing the helmet. He circled Roy slowly, as if to appraise him from every angle.

Roy was well aware that Jason was dangerous, always had been, but it rarely registered as anything more than another weapon in Roy’s quiver, something that could always be used in his favor. Now the nape of his neck prickled as Jason crossed behind him, warning him that there was a predator at his back. He didn’t move.

Jason came to a stop in front of him, dragged his eyes from the tips of Roy’s shiny new dress shoes to the crown of his head...and smiled. Just a curve to one side of his mouth, with its full lower lip that was always a little downturned at rest.

“You’ll do, Julia,” he said, and that was that.

*

A month into living and working with Jason, Roy finally answered Dick’s repeated invitations to lunch. They met in Dick’s neighborhood, which was crammed with charming bistros and gastropubs.

Dick blinked when he saw Roy. “You look...different.”

“I’m heading to work after this,” Roy said. He wasn’t _that_ dressed up—gray suit, black shirt, no vest or tie and collar open—but Dick was looking at him like he hadn’t been aware Roy could bathe himself. It was a little insulting.

Dick looked incredible, of course, tanned despite Gotham’s perennially miserable weather and wearing a soft blue sweater that made his eyes look even brighter and more impossible. He swept his hair back from his forehead and smiled.

“Well, it’s a great suit. Alfred’s guy, right?”

“Huh?”

“Alfred always gets Bruce’s suits from the same place,” Dick said. “This little old Italian man. I always figured he was about a hundred when I was a kid, but he’s still going. He used to dress me when I was living at home and had to go to those awful galas all the time, and I assume he did for Jason too. Anyway I’m pretty sure that’s one of his,” he finished, gesturing towards Roy.

“That’s...kind of adorable,” Roy said. Jason was so fiercely independent in most things; the idea of him patronizing a specific tailor because Alfred had liked him when Jason was a kid was unexpectedly charming.

“I guess,” Dick said. “Speaking of Jason...how’s it going? Working with him, I mean.”

Roy gestured to himself. “Well, as you can see, he has thus far failed to murder me, if that’s what you were worried about.”

“No, I mean…” Dick seemed to be at a loss for words, which was rare. “I know he can be...difficult.”

“You are aware that he and I worked together without a problem for like two years, right?” Roy asked, irritated. “Maybe he’s ‘difficult’ with you and the…family,” he amended instead of “Bats,” since they were in public, “but he actually likes me. Possibly because I don’t spend the time I’m with him listing off everything he’s done wrong.”

“That’s not fair,” Dick said. “We’re talking about _murder_ , not a rebellious adolescence. It’s not like he was cutting class or going joyriding or…”

“Doing drugs?” Roy finished.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Dick protested.

“Then what _were_ you going to say?”

“To be honest, I was kind of running out of ideas,” Dick said, spreading his hands. “You _know_ what a huge dork I was in high school, you were there. What do rebellious teens do? Flagpole sitting? The Twist?”

Roy held his stare for a moment before bursting into laughter. “Okay, yeah, fine,” he said. “You were an enormous nerd, acknowledged. Remember those bylaws you drew up for the Titans?”

“I made you all sign them and you used a fountain pen arrow,” Dick said, also laughing.

“It’s possible we were _all_ enormous nerds.”

Dick stopped laughing, but his eyes were still soft and crinkly, his expression fond. “I don’t want to fight, Roy,” he said. “If you say this thing with Jason is working, I trust you. I just want to have lunch with my friend.”

And Roy felt himself yielding to Dick Grayson, like he always did. “Then let’s order,” he said, picking up his menu and knowing it wouldn’t hide that he was smiling back.

*

It rained that evening, pouring down over the harbor and rattling against the roof of the Iceberg Lounge loud enough Roy could hear it over the music. It didn’t stop the beautiful people from showing up, but Jason didn’t seem pleased by the crowd, just cranky and distracted.

“You okay?” Roy asked him once he’d finished a round of glad-handing.

“Never better,” Jason said, straightening Roy’s tie a little roughly. “How was _lunch?_ ” But he walked away before Roy could answer.

They left the Sus to close things down and ducked out early, following a lead Jason had gotten on some members of Black Mask’s former gang and a sale of assault weapons souped up with Thanagarian tech. The weather was absolutely miserable; despite the dense kevlar weave of his costume Roy was soaked to the skin within minutes, and he could only pray his bowstring didn’t get soaked enough to snap.

Jason, of course, seemed unbothered in his helmet and heavy leather jacket. They made their way across the roofs to the warehouse where the deal was supposed to go down and slipped in through a window. Sure enough, there were the guns, and there were the guys—all twenty of them.

“That’s a lot more mooks than you said would be here, Jaybird,” Roy whispered as they watched the men negotiating and posturing below. “Mooks with crazy-ass space guns, like, an inch away from them.”

“Isn’t that what the EMP arrow’s for?” Jason asked, reaching over and plucking Roy’s bowstring. Wow, was he up in Roy’s space tonight.

“Yeah, but you know they’re all packing, and EMP arrow’s not gonna do shit against plain old combustion weapons, which I might remind you is what _you_ use—and you’re already going,” Roy said as Jason thumped him on the shoulder and leapt into the open space below them.

Nocking the EMP arrow to his bow, Roy fired it directly into the nearest weapons case, shorting out the lights and, he assumed, all of the getaway vehicles unless one of these guys had a _really_ old beater.

“What the fuck!” someone shouted.

“Shit! It’s the Red Hood!”

Shots filled the warehouse, not that they could see anything but muzzle flashes between the storm and the lack of lights. Roy sent up a flare arrow and swung down to join Jason, who was already having himself a grand old time shooting guns out of mooks’ hands and kicking teeth out of mouths.

“It’s the Red Hood and _Arsenal_ ,” Roy told the first guy he reached, punching him in the jaw and then using his dazed form to block an attack by another opponent. “Red Hood and Arsenal. I get no goddamn respect.”

“What the fuck is Green Arrow doing here?” someone yelled. Roy heard Jason crack up behind his helmet.

“Unfuckingbelievable,” Roy muttered, and then it was just dodging and parrying, firing off arrows when he had room and kicking when he didn’t, working his way closer to Jason. He took an elbow to the temple that sent him staggering, shook it off and put two guys down with a weighted net arrow.

Jason had one of the guys, presumably the ringleader, bent over the hood of a car with his arm twisted behind him. “Where’d you get the guns, Zelinski?” he demanded.

“Fuck off, Hood!”

“You want to keep this arm? _Where’d you get the fucking guns?_ ”

Another goon rose up behind Jason, swinging a length of rebar towards his head. “Down!” Roy shouted. Jason ducked and Roy put an arrow through the goon’s shoulder. He went down screaming, dropping the rebar.

But Jason had let go of Zelinski, who snatched a gun off the floor, aiming at Roy—and Jason pistol whipped him across the back of the head, dropping him. Suddenly it was just the two of them standing in a dark warehouse, breathing hard, all the gangsters moaning or unconscious on the floor.

“You think any of these assholes that are still conscious have what we need?” Roy asked.

Sirens blared in the distance, no doubt thanks to all the gunshots. “Doesn’t matter. Time to go,” Jason said, grabbing Roy’s wrist like Roy was somehow going to get lost, and they booked it for the back exit.

The rain didn’t let up the whole way back to their place. They made their way in through the roof access, bypassing the building’s security cameras.

“You didn’t use a trick arrow on that last guy,” Jason said as they went down the stairs and into the apartment proper. He was still moving like he was in a fight, like there was something explosive inside him about to ignite, even as he yanked his helmet off and threw it on the couch. His hair was wild and sweaty, stuck to his forehead, and his pupils were huge in the darkness.

“Someone tries to take your head off, they don’t get to meet the nice version of me,” Roy said, wringing just a _stupid_ amount of water out of his hair.

Jason didn’t say anything. Roy looked over to find Jason staring at him, his cheeks flushed and his shoulders rolled forward like he was waiting to throw a punch. “Jay?”

Jason shoved him up against the wall and kissed him.

Roy grabbed for him on instinct, clutching at his shoulders, Jason’s dark, heavy brows out of focus this close up. Roy was used to being kissed hard, _loved_ it, but he had never expected it from _Jason_ , and his surprise made him turn his head just enough to get his mouth free and say: “Um...what?”

Jason’s smile was wicked and reckless, the dangerous thing inside of him coming out to play, and his weight pressing Roy into the wall was—shit, it was really good. “Well, how do _you_ want to deal with the adrenalin?” he asked.

Roy looked at Jason’s wild hair, his red mouth, the curve of his thigh between Roy’s own, and thought about how long it had been since Kori. “This works,” he said, and pulled Jason back in.

Jason’s mouth sealed hot over his, and this time Roy kissed him back, fumbling to get his bracers off before burying his hands in that thick, sweaty hair. Jason kissed like he did everything else, with a deadly confidence and no restraint whatsoever. Roy felt ravished within seconds, but he wasn’t complaining.

Jason’s hands slid up his arms and Roy broke the kiss again. “Take your fucking gloves off, Jaybird, I feel like I’m getting felt up by my dentist.”

“What kind of weird-ass back alley dentist are you going to who wears leather gloves?” Jason asked, but he bit the tip of one of the gloves’ fingers and tugged the glove off with his teeth. He offered the other hand to Roy, and Roy met his eyes and bit down obediently, letting Jason pull his hand free.

And yeah, Jason’s bare hands felt _much_ better on him than the gloves had. Roy was still chilled from the rain and Jason’s fingers were burning hot on his arms, his face, his neck. His mouth was hot too, making its way along Roy’s jaw and down his throat, and Roy could get used to Gotham’s shitty weather if this was how he warmed up from it.

He dropped his own grip to Jason’s ass, got a good double handful of thick muscle and squeezed, and heard Jason growl against his throat. “Yeah?” he asked, as if Jason’s growl had been words, and squeezed again. Jason rocked against him, his erection rubbing unmistakably against Roy’s hip. Roy groaned and shifted to give Jason a better angle, to grind down on Jason’s thigh between his legs.

“Fuck. Wait,” Jason said, fumbling at his fly, and Roy maybe hadn’t thought about how far this was going to go, but right now all he could think was that Jason wasn’t moving nearly fast enough. Jason pulled out his dick, flushed and hard, and Roy kind of wanted to get on his knees but Jason was already working at Roy’s zipper.

“Shit, Jaybird,” Roy said as Jason reached into his pants, stroked him a couple of times before pulling him free. Roy reached for Jason’s dick, happy to return the favor he assumed he was about to receive, but Jason knocked his hand away.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “You just—” He spat into his hand, lined them up and stroked them together.

“Ah, fuck.” Roy’s head dropped back against the wall, but he kept his eyes open, didn’t want to miss the sight of Jason’s cock pressed up against his, his big hand working them both. They could have used some lube, to be honest, but Roy didn’t want to go looking for it, and anyway Jason was already leaking, which made Roy wonder just how long he’d been hard, and why.

And then Jason’s dick slid against his and his mouth found Roy’s again, and Roy’s brain turned off. He got one hand back into Jason’s hair and the other down the back of his pants, gripping that glorious ass to keep Jason from getting away. Not that Jason seemed at all interested in getting away, pressing against him like he wanted to push Roy through the wall, his free hand bruisingly tight on Roy’s hip. He wasn’t the strongest person Roy had ever been with, not by a long shot, but he was plenty solid, and _fuck_ , there was very little Roy enjoyed more than being pinned down by someone dangerous.

“Yeah, Jay, that’s real good,” he panted against Jason’s mouth. “So good for me, fuck, Jason…” He cut off as Jason let out a shocked little noise and came all over his hand and both of their dicks.

“...Holy _shit_ that was hot,” Roy breathed, and felt Jason sag against him. “Fuck, I gotta...I can…”

He reached for his dick, but Jason tensed up again, resettled his hand just around Roy. “ _I’ll_ do it,” he said again, that growl back in his voice, and having Jason’s dick hard and throbbing against Roy’s had been good, but this? Jason jerking him off hard and fast with his own come, panting hot against Roy’s shoulder? Roy locked his knees and braced himself against the wall and just enjoyed the ride.

“Fuck, Jaybird, just...yeah, just like that, I can’t...shit, Jay, I’m gonna come,” he babbled.

“Do it,” Jason commanded, and, well, Roy always was a people pleaser. He spilled into Jason’s fist, breathless and dazed, and heard Jason’s satisfied groan as he did.

For a moment they just stood there, breathing out of sync in the quiet apartment. As Roy’s pulse came down, he remembered that he was freezing, and started to shiver. He braced himself to meet Jason’s eyes and lifted his chin.

Jason stepped back and patted his chest with the hand that wasn’t sticky from both of their orgasms. “It’s late,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

He stepped away and vanished into his own bedroom, leaving Roy standing in the dark with come cooling on his skin and full-body goosebumps.

Huh.


	2. Chapter 2

Roy woke up with an ache in his shoulders and couldn’t remember why until he looked down and saw the fingerprint bruises on his hip. Oh, right. Last night, after several years of seemingly platonic friendship, Jason had abruptly stuck his tongue down Roy’s throat and jerked them both off before vanishing into the night like, well, Batman.

Roy closed his eyes and quietly panicked.

What he had with Jason was _good_. It was the least complicated friendship Roy had ever had, in fact: he accepted Jason for who and what he was, and Jason did likewise, and then they beat up criminals together. He didn’t want to lose that to an impulsive decision brought on by too much pent-up energy and whatever the hell went on in that beautiful head of Jason’s. Especially now that he’d pulled up stakes and was living with the guy. _Especially_ because it meant that Dick had been right when he’d said this would end badly…

...oh shit, Dick was going to _kill him_. Pro tip, Harper: the best way to get your best friend to return your clandestine romantic affections is not to _fuck his little brother_.

The thought of clandestine romantic affections made him wonder if there had been something more behind Jason kissing him last night besides basic physical urges. He dismissed the thought as quickly as it arose. Jason was hardly the type to sit around pining; if he’d been interested in Roy for anything more than a quick late night handy, he would have said something.

And maybe that would make it okay, because it wasn’t like Roy didn’t know how to have no-strings-attached sex. He was the _king_ of no-strings-attached sex! Okay, yeah, strings might have eventually cropped up with Donna...and Jade...and Kori...but he was actually capable of a one night stand or two with a friend or colleague that didn’t end in tears. Helena had never once tried to stab him, and Grace had only ever given him friendly punches. Mostly.

It might be fine. It _had_ to be fine.

Roy pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt before braving the world outside of his bedroom, just in case Jason wanted to forget that he’d ever seen any part of Roy’s body that wasn’t normally covered by his clothes. He found Jason in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and scrolling sleepily through his phone.

“Morning,” he said.

Jason’s eyes flickered to his, the same color as the overcast sky outside the window. “You look like shit.”

Roy felt some of the tension bleeding out of him. This was normal Jason. “Well, then you’d better have made enough coffee for both of us.”

Jason waved a hand at the coffee pot and Roy went and poured himself a cup. While he was still adding milk and sugar and didn’t have to look directly at Jason, he cleared his throat. “Uh...about last night…”

“I already texted Tim,” Jason said, which left Roy feeling baffled and oddly exposed until he continued. “Gordon hasn’t gotten anything out of Zelinski yet, so we’ll need a new line on the arms shipments.”

Right. _That_ part of last night. “We’ll get one,” he said, watching Jason over the rim of his mug.

But those storm-blue eyes were already back on Jason’s phone screen. “Fuck yeah we will,” Jason said absently, clearly distracted, and Roy sipped his coffee and reminded himself that this what what he wanted.

*

Sonia Falcone was the youngest member of the Falcone family in her generation, and a spoiled brat. She was a good eight months shy of her twenty-first birthday, and her fake ID wouldn’t have gotten her into the Iceberg Lounge if Jason hadn’t told Tony to let her through whenever she showed up. But she was old enough to know at least some of what her family was up to, and luckily for Roy, she had a documented thing for redheads.

“Are you enjoying your evening, Ms. Falcone?” he asked, bending over the booth where she was seated with her equally spoiled and underage friends.

She gave him a blatantly appreciative once-over, which would have been flattering if Roy hadn’t wanted to snatch the appletini out of her twenty-year-old hands, dump it in the harbor, and send her home. Not that he hadn’t been up to far worse at a younger age.

“That remains to be seen, Mr…?” She raised her eyebrows at him inquisitively.

“Harper. Roy Harper,” he said. Jason wasn’t using an alias, so it didn’t make sense for him to. “I’m Mr. Todd’s business partner.”

“Well.” She rested her chin on her hand and peeped up at him through her lashes. “Isn’t Mr. Todd a lucky boy?”

Roy gave her his most charming smile—which, if he did say so himself, was _very_ charming. “If there’s anything I can do to make your evening more pleasant, Ms. Falcone, you just come find me.”

“I most certainly will, Mr. Harper,” she said.

Roy straightened up and walked away, catching Jason’s eye across the floor as he did. It was silly for him to feel dirty—Sonia was only a few years younger than Roy, and even fewer years younger than Jason, and Roy had had no problem with Jason sticking his hand down Roy’s pants a few nights ago. But Sonia seemed so much _younger_ than Jason, or maybe Jason was just old for his age.

Well, of course Jason was old for his age. It made Roy’s chest ache to think about why. He looked away from Jason’s unreadable expression and went to go shmooze a city councilman.

Sonia found him about an hour later in an alcove by the windows that looked out onto the harbor. She was clearly several more appletinis in and bold with it, although Carmine Falcone’s little girl had probably never been shy about demanding what she wanted.

“What are you doing here all by yourself?” she asked, tugging gently on his tie and batting her eyelashes at him.

“Waiting for you, it looks like,” he said. “Where are you bodyguards this fine evening?”

She blinked. “My what?”

“Your brothers,” he clarified. “You’ve always had one of them hanging around you when you’ve come here before.”

Her smile turned knowing. “You’ve been watching me?”

“I can’t help noticing the prettiest girl in the room. It’s a curse,” Roy said. Also the most mobbed-up girl in the room, but that wasn’t going to get him what he wanted out of her. “So your brothers…?”

She rolled her eyes. “Vito’s probably sleeping it off somewhere. Alberto and Mario are with Daddy, some stupid meet with the Maronis in the Bowery. Why Daddy wants me to pay attention to this boring shit, I’ll never know.” She smiled again, her eyes heavy-lidded. “And Mama’s probably already asleep, which means that no one will notice what time I come home.”

Roy glanced at his watch—okay, Jason’s watch, he’d borrowed it—and gently detached her hands from his lapels. “Well, I wouldn’t want to keep you out past your bedtime, Cinderella.” With a hand on the small of her back, he guided her to the door. “Tony, please call Ms. Falcone’s car for her.”

Sonia frowned. “Wait, what?”

“You have a lovely night, Ms. Falcone,” Roy said, and then dropped the charming smile and made a beeline for Jason. He found him scowling at the stage, where the four-piece band was playing something moody and barely audible over the other noises of the club. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Jason said, though his expression didn’t lighten. “Did you get it?”

“Carmine and the two older sons are meeting with the Maronis in the Bowery, right now,” Roy said.

Jason finally cracked a smile, although not one that boded well for anyone he encountered tonight. “Sounds like we’ve got somewhere to be.”

They took a speedboat across the harbor to the Bowery, wind whipping Roy’s hair back. The Falcone-Maroni meet was less profitable than they would have hoped, filled with a lot of empty posturing and very few concrete details. There was a rising player on the scene, that much was clear, and neither family was happy about it, but there was no name to go with it. Roy watched Jason’s fists clench and wondered if he’d have to sit on him to keep him from crashing through the window and starting something. Not that both families didn’t deserve everything Jason could give them, but trying to apprehend them was pointless—none of them would spend even an hour in jail—and killing them would cut off the information flow, not to mention bringing a lot of angry Bats to their door.

The meeting broke up without them getting anything useful out of it, and Roy could feel the frustration rolling off of Jason in waves. “Want to hit the streets?” Roy asked once they were far enough away from the mobsters to talk.

“I don’t really patrol in Gotham these days,” Jason said. “Too many chances of running into someone who’ll want to give me shit about my methods.”

“I’ll make you a bet,” Roy said. “I bet you that from here to home, straight line, we see zero Bats and...let’s say three crimes to stop. Minimum.”

Jason snorted, but his voice, when he spoke, was amused. “And what exactly are the terms of this bet?”

“Why? Afraid to lose?”

He heard Jason’s laugh echo behind the helmet and it sent something dark and shivery down Roy’s spine. Then Jason was off, running across the roof, and Roy swore and scrambled to keep up with him, fitting a grapple arrow to his bow as he went.

They stopped three muggings, two convenience store break-ins, a carjacking, and a straight-up fight. They saw no Bats. They tumbled into their apartment breathless and laughing, and Jason’s face was flushed when he pulled the helmet off.

“I win,” Roy said, when he could speak. “What do I get?”

“What do you want?” Jason asked, his smile sliding into dangerous, and Roy almost wasn’t surprised when his shoulders met the wall again. He didn’t hesitate to kiss Jason back this time, moaned into Jason’s mouth when Jason reached down to cup him through his pants. Maybe this was a bad idea, but it had worked out pretty well last time, and Roy had never been good at saying no to bad ideas anyway, especially when they felt this good.

Jason sank to his knees and Roy let out a shaky breath. “Yeah, you’re right, these were definitely the terms of the bet,” he said. “I love gambling.”

“I wouldn’t pick up the habit if I were you,” Jason said. Somehow it didn’t sting the way it would have if someone like Dick had said it—and then Roy forcibly pushed Dick out of his mind and focused on Jason, kneeling in front of him and unzipping Roy’s pants.

He was worth focusing on. Jason had been a pretty kid, Roy remembered; he was too big and rough to qualify as pretty anymore, with a nose that had clearly been broken at least once and a scar through one eyebrow. He wasn’t classically handsome or even cute. But shit, was he _hot_.

He was even hotter, it turned out, pumping Roy’s cock to full hardness before getting his mouth around it. Roy groaned and let his hands drop to Jason’s hair, sinking into the thick, heavy curls of it.

“Fuck, you’re good at this,” he said, petting that soft hair. “They teach you this in the All-Caste?”

Jason laughed around his dick, which was probably a no but also felt fucking incredible. Roy’d always loved making Jason laugh, but he’d never considered the benefits of doing it in this particular context.

“Ah, Jesus, Jaybird,” he breathed as Jason stopped laughing and went back to pressing his tongue against the underside of Roy’s dick. He let his head drop back against the wall. “Just like that, baby.”

The endearment slipped out without conscious thought, but Jason didn’t seem to mind, or at least he didn’t stop the hot, irresistible movement of his mouth. He worked Roy’s dick like he was on a deadline, one hand pumping the part of Roy’s shaft he couldn’t get his mouth around, the other fondling his balls.

“Shit, Jay, slow down, I’m not gonna last,” Roy said.

Jason’s eyes flickered up to meet his, dark and amused, and Roy realized that Jason had no intention of letting him last. The bet might have been a stupid one with no real stakes and both of them hoping for the same outcome, but Roy had still won it. Jason liked to win too, and this was how he was going to do it.

“You bastard,” Roy laughed breathlessly, and Jason’s eyes crinkled, but he didn’t stop or slow down and soon, too soon, Roy’s belly was tightening and his hands were clenching in Jason’s hair and he was coming in Jason’s gorgeous mouth.

He sagged against the wall. “ _Fuck_ ,” he said with feeling, and watched with sleepy satisfaction as Jason pulled off his dick and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. His mouth was red and his hair was wild and _Roy_ had done that.

Jason got to his feet, a little stiffly, and the Red Hood outfit didn’t show much but he was clearly hard. He leaned against Roy and reached for his own fly. “Hang on, let me…”

“Oh no, we can do better than _that_ ,” Roy said, forcing himself away from the wall and tugging Jason the ten steps into the living room. He pushed Jason onto the couch and went to his knees in front of him, reaching for Jason’s zipper. “You gotta let me into the game here, Jaybird.”

“Is that a fact?” Jason asked, but he didn’t move from where he sat sprawled on the couch, open and easy. Roy got Jason’s pants undone and yeah, he was hard, thick and flushed in Roy’s hand. Roy’s mouth watered.

“Mmhmm,” Roy said, leaning in just close enough to breathe against Jason’s cock. “Hey, while I’m on a winning streak, I got another wager for you.”

Jason’s expression was still politely amused, but his thigh under Roy’s free hand was tense. “What’s that?”

“Bet you come even faster than I did,” Roy said, and got to work.

He won that bet, too.

*

The next morning, Roy sat down across the kitchen table from Jason and said, “We have to talk about it.”

Jason waited a few long seconds before putting down his phone and meeting Roy’s gaze. It was sunny out today, as sunny as it ever got in Gotham, and it brought out the green in Jason’s eyes. “Do we?”

Well, at least he wasn’t pretending he didn’t know what Roy was talking about. “Calm down, I’m not asking to go steady,” Roy said. “Unless that’s what you’re looking for here. You gonna pin me, Jaybird?”

Jason rolled his eyes, but he looked amused now instead of irritated. “Only in the purely physical sense,” he said. “Consider _all_ of this in the purely physical sense, actually.”

Roy nodded, relieved. He wasn’t sure what he’d have done if Jason had wanted to turn this into something more. He adored Jason, would take a bullet for him without question—but dating him? He couldn’t even wrap his head around the concept.

“I can do physical,” he said, and grinned. “As you may have noticed last night. Somewhere in between all the begging.”

Jason suddenly became very interested in his coffee. “Go away.”

“Nope, got another question,” Roy said. “How much is Dick gonna kill me in the face?”

“ _That’s_ what you’re worried about? _Dick?_ ” Jason asked. “Why would he have anything to do with this?”

“Uh, because I’m fucking his little brother?”

Jason choked on his coffee. “Uh, no,” he spluttered, grabbing for a napkin.

“I am sullying his precious baby bird with my sinful aged hands!” Roy said, because watching Jason flail was really very funny. “And mouth. And penis.”

Jason held up a finger. “Okay, first: _Tim_ is his little brother. _Damian_ is his _baby_ brother. I’m his _younger_ brother.”

Roy leaned back and hooked his elbows over the back of his chair. “You say that now, but I remember how cute you were in those little Robin panties.”

“We can deal with your weird fetishes later, Roy,” Jason said, which, point to Jason. “Second: Dick doesn’t give a shit what I do.”

“That’s not true.”

“Fine. He doesn’t give a shit what I do as long as I don’t kill anyone,” Jason amended.

“Jay,” Roy said. Jason had thrown it out dismissively, but Roy knew it bothered him—and it wasn’t fair to Dick either. “He cares about you. He _worries_ about you.”

“Here’s an idea: let’s stop fucking talking about him, okay?”

Okay, so Jason wasn’t up for discussing his family right now. That was fine—lord knew there were times Roy couldn’t bear to talk about Dick either. Besides, discussing Dick in the context of messing around with Jason made him feel guilty and weird. “Fair enough,” Roy said. “One more question.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“This thing we’re doing,” Roy said. “Does it only happen at two in the morning?”

Jason finally stopped avoiding his eyes and set his coffee down. HIs expression was impassive, but his voice, when he spoke, was amused. “Why?” he asked. “What did you have in mind?”

Roy’s grin widened.

*

Things changed after that, and yet things didn’t change. They still spent their evenings glad-handing at the Iceberg Lounge and their nights tracking down leads on the streets. The same picture emerged every time: there was someone new behind the scenes, someone grabbing up all the small-time gangs and amassing power. But no one knew the name, or wouldn’t talk if they did, and every time they hit a wall Roy could sense the frustration rolling off of Jason in waves.

The difference was, now Roy could take Jason home and help him burn off that frustration in ways that were even more fun than beating the shit out of mobsters and crooked city councilmen. Like grinding against him in the stairs, too worked up to even make it into the apartment, until they both came in their pants, or letting Jason straddle him on the couch and get himself off while Roy begged Jason to touch him. Roy found that he particularly loved going down on Jason slow and sweet, stretching it out until Jason was clearly half out of his mind with the need to come. Jason tended to get revenge for those nights the next morning, pinning Roy up against the kitchen counter and jerking him off excruciatingly slowly while he thrust against the curve of Roy’s ass.

Roy liked Jason’s kind of revenge a lot.

A couple weeks in they’d gotten a lead on some crooked cops running a protection racket in one of the worst parts of the Bowery—which was saying something, since there weren’t any _good_ parts of the Bowery. Jason had gone down briefly in the fight, and Roy had—well, he had to admit he’d lost it a bit, mowing through the dirty cops to get to his partner. He hadn’t killed anyone, but he’d put more than a few distinctly non-trick arrows in some very unpleasant places.

Jason was fine—a split lip, some bruises, nothing worse—and he’d been on Roy the minute they got inside their apartment, bloody mouth on Roy’s and a hand down the back of Roy’s pants. “I want to fuck you,” he growled, backing Roy up towards his bedroom, and the way his hand was moving left no possibility that he was being euphemistic.

“Yeah, fuck, do it, Jaybird,” Roy said, yanking Jason’s shirt off of him.

They toppled onto Roy’s bed, clothing and gear flying in their haste to get naked. Roy fumbled the lube out of his nightstand drawer with his pants still dangling off of one leg and Jason grabbed it out of his hand. He put Roy on his back, bent to kiss him, and pushed one slick finger in without preamble. Roy gasped and accidentally bit Jason’s lip, reopening the split, and Jason just laughed and kissed him harder.

“Fuck, Jay,” Roy said, hooking an arm around Jason’s neck. “Give a guy a second.” He kissed Jason again, tasting blood, which probably should have been gross but just made his stomach go hot and wanting. “Okay, yeah, go ahead.”

Jason started working him open in earnest, and Roy spread his legs wider and kept up his death grip on Jason’s neck and tried to remember to breathe. It had been a while, and he’d forgotten how much he liked this. Jason’s fingers were blunt and strong, and the sweet burn of two of them breaching him made him feverish and impatient again.

“Enjoying yourself?” Jason murmured in his ear. Roy followed his gaze to where his cock was leaking against his stomach and then back up to Jason’s smirk.

“Yeah, yeah, hurry up, would you?” Roy asked, pushing up against Jason’s fingers.

Jason’s smile widened. “Thought I was giving you a second.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Roy laughed. “Get in me already.”

“Well, if you need it so bad…” Jason leaned away from Roy’s gentle kick at his hip and reached for the lube and a condom. He hitched Roy’s thighs around his waist, put Roy where he wanted him, and then pushed in, slow but unyielding.

Roy closed his eyes and breathed through it. He’d known how big Jason was, was intimately familiar with Jason’s dick after the past few weeks, but he’d still been unprepared for the sensation of being stretched and filled quite this thoroughly. He wanted it, though; wanted to feel Jason inside him; wanted to hold him there.

“God.” Jason dropped his forehead to Roy’s shoulder, his breath coming in hot pants against Roy’s skin. “Roy.”

Roy’s fingers found their way into Jason’s thick hair. He could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears, overwhelming in the unexpected quiet of the moment.

And then he shifted, and Jason groaned, and Roy said, “Come on, Jaybird, _fuck_ me,” and the quiet was gone. Jason rolled his hips and Roy arched to meet him, digging his fingers into those broad shoulders as Jason found a rhythm.

“Shit, you’re so tight,” Jason gasped, rocking down.

“I don’t think I like the element of… _hh_...surprise in your tone there,” Roy said, and Jason laughed breathlessly against his mouth. “Ah fuck, Jason, harder.”

“You sure?”

Roy dug his heel into the small of Jason’s back. “Are you the terror of the underworld or not? I said _harder_.”

“Jesus, Roy,” Jason groaned, and then he was giving it to Roy hard and sweet, just the way Roy liked it, and all Roy could do was hang on and enjoy the ride.

Well, and talk, because when Roy was feeling this good there was nothing that could shut his mouth. “Yeah, Jay, just like that, baby, don’t stop, _fuck_.” There was that “baby” again, but Jason never seemed to mind and the word always felt right in his mouth when Jason was touching him.

“You like that?” Jason asked. He was flushed, gorgeous like this, his hair sticking to his forehead in sweaty curls and his irises a midnight-blue ring around blown pupils. “Tell me.”

Roy let out a shaky laugh. “Obviously I love it, you, hah, _fucking_ egomaniac,” he panted. “Love the way you fuck me, Jaybird, _god_ this was such a good idea.”

He dragged Jason down for a messy kiss, and Jason shifted angles to get to his mouth, and suddenly he was hitting Roy’s prostate on every thrust and Roy was seeing stars. He thought he was babbling and whatever he was saying would probably embarrass him if he remembered it in the morning, but right now he couldn’t give even a tenth of a shit about that, not when Jason looked and felt so unbelievably good.

Right when he was sure he couldn’t take anymore, and still far too soon, Jason’s rhythm faltered. “Fuck, I’m close,” he gasped.

Roy gripped his shoulders tighter. He was probably leaving bruises, but hell, it was his turn. “Do it.”

“Roy, god, I can’t—” Jason said, turned his face into Roy’s neck, and then he was filling the condom and shaking with it. Roy pet his back and kissed the side of his head and felt deeply satisfied, even though he was still as hard as a goddamn rock.

After a minute, Jason hauled himself back up. “Shit, you’re still…” Roy gasped as Jason shifted inside of him, still mostly hard, and Jason’s dark eyes widened. “...Touch yourself.”

“What?”

Jason licked his lips. “I want to watch you get yourself off while I’m still inside you.”

“ _Fuck_ , Jason,” Roy said, but he wrapped his hand around his dick obediently and started pumping. Maybe it should have felt like Jason was getting his own rocks off and letting Roy do all the rest of the work, but it didn’t. Not with Jason still so thick and hot inside him and the intensity of his eyes as he watched Roy stroke himself.

Roy was shameless, couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been, but now his cheeks were burning and he had to close his eyes to get away from Jason’s expression.

“No,” Jason said. “Open your eyes.”

It was an order, and Roy was no damn good at taking orders from anyone else, but this was _Jason_. He opened his eyes, and there was Jason, the full unmovable weight of his attention, the irresistible devouring pull of him, and Roy’s orgasm hit him so hard and fast it stole his breath.

Jason let out a soft sound and then was silent. Roy watched his chest rise and fall with his breathing, the faint light through the windows nearly blue where it touched his skin. A siren wailed in the streets far below.

“Here,” Jason said suddenly, and he wasn’t speaking loud but it echoed in the room anyway. He slipped out of Roy and reached for the tissues on the nightstand, passing some to Roy. They cleaned themselves up in awkward silence, Jason tying off the condom and tossing it into Roy’s wastebasket along with the tissues.

Then Jason stood up, patting Roy on the thigh like he was encouraging a timid third-grader, or a horse. “See you in the morning,” he said, and gathered up a bunch of his clothes from the floor. Roy suspected he hadn’t gotten all of them.

“Yeah,” Roy said, and Jason slipped out of Roy’s bedroom and, presumably, into his own. Roy flopped back against the pillows.

_Shit._


	3. Chapter 3

“I hate to admit it, but I kind of love these fights,” Dick said as he and Roy ran through Gotham Square, in the opposite direction of the panicked, fleeing crowds. Well, maybe not “panicked.” More like “mildly confused.”

“Wait, for real?” Roy asked.

“Yeah. I mean, I know there’s still destruction of property and a chance that people could get hurt, but no one’s being tortured or wearing someone else’s skin as a coat. It’s refreshing.”

Finally, they got close enough to see their foe, standing atop a mailbox and waving his weapon in the air. His...mustard weapon.

“Dick, we’re fighting the Condiment King,” Roy pointed out.

Dick grinned. “Yes, and it’s fun!” He pointed dramatically at the costumed villain. “Condiment King! Did you think we wouldn’t _ketchup_ to you eventually?”

Roy groaned. Why was he so gone for this idiot again?

The Condiment King turned on them in a rage and fired the mustard gun at them. Roy dodged right and Dick, of course, did an unnecessarily elaborate series of flips to the left. “Be silent, peasants! _I_ make the condiment puns, not you!”

“Sorry, I know how much you relish them!” Dick said. “I didn’t mean to make you so peppery!”

“Is pepper a condiment?” Roy asked, nocking a net arrow to his bowstring. “Isn’t it a spice?”

“I didn’t mean to make him so vinegary?”

“Still iffy, but I’ll allow it.”

“How dare you mock me?” the Condiment King shrieked.

“I mean, fairly easily,” Roy said. “You’re not very scary and your whole shtick is real dumb.”

“I would look out for the mustard gun,” Dick warned. “It’s no fun if you get it in your eyes.”

“We’re both wearing masks with lens shields.”

“Oh. Then yeah, he’s not scary at all.”

“I WILL DESTROY YOU!” the Condiment King shouted.

Roy shot the net arrow. It expanded as it released, knocking the Condiment King off the mailbox and pinning him on his back like a turtle, the mustard gun skittering away out of his reach. Roy stopped its spin by resting his foot on it.

“Bet you never cole _slaw_ that coming,” he said. Dick put his hands over his heart in silent appreciation.

A few minutes later, as they watched the cops take Condiment King away, Dick turned to Roy. “Hey, I’m hungry now. Are you hungry?”

_“Starved.”_

They ended up eating loaded hot dogs on a roof overlooking Gotham Square, watching as it resumed its normal, reasonably lawful chaos. “This was fun,” Dick said, licking mustard from the corner of his mouth. “Like old times.”

“Yeah. I see what you mean about enjoying the goofy ones.” Roy smiled. “Remember when we fought that stupid clown, whatshisface? Punch?”

“Oh god, I’d forgotten all about that,” Dick said, then laughed. “Remember how we got out of his stupid death trap? Our hands were tied, so I held your bow with my feet so you could fire it with your teeth.”

Roy started laughing, too. “That should _not_ have worked.”

“No, it absolutely should not have.”

“I guess we’re just that good.”

Dick looked over at him, so bright and fond, and Roy’s heart stopped in his chest. “I’m glad you were free tonight. I guess I thought when you moved to Gotham that we’d be hanging out more, but it sounds like Jason’s keeping you pretty busy.”

Roy choked on his last bite of hot dog as an extremely lurid montage of all the things he and Jason had been “busy” doing flashed through his mind. “Uh, yeah,” he said, coughing and taking a swig of one of the Zestis they’d bought to go with the hot dogs. “Lotta...Lounge business.”

“Sure,” Dick said. “And you’re...okay working there? It’s good?”

There was a concerned tilt to his eyebrows as he asked the question. Roy couldn’t blame Jason for being frustrated with his family if they all constantly treated him like a walking time bomb like this. But it had been such a nice night so far, and Roy didn’t want to lose that, so he made himself consider the question instead of losing his temper.

The Iceberg Lounge was running smoothly. He and Jason were stopping the smaller crimes on the regular, and working their way up to whoever this new, shadowy player was. And what they did when they were alone—well, it didn’t mean anything, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell Dick about it, but he was enjoying the hell out of it.

“Yeah,” he said, and if he couldn’t quite fight his smile, hopefully Dick would think it was over stupid Punch or something and not how outrageously good his little brother was in bed. “It’s good.”

*

“I can’t believe this is what I’m breaking my promise to Bruce over,” Jason said with a long-suffering sigh.

Roy lifted his lips from their lazy exploration of the faded scars scattered across Jason’s broad back. “Hm?”

“We agreed I could operate in Gotham and he wouldn’t interfere as long as I didn’t kill anyone,” Jason said. He shot a venomous glare over his shoulder, as much as he could from his position on his hands and knees on Roy’s bed. “And I’m about to murder you if you don’t stop daydreaming and _fuck me already_.”

Roy chuckled. “Just letting you get used to me,” he said, although the truth was that once he’d sunk completely into the tight heat of Jason’s glorious ass he’d had to pause for his own good as well, or risk coming embarrassingly quickly. Really, he’d been on a hair trigger since Jason had asked for his dick. Well, demanded. Jason didn’t really _ask_ for things.

Like now. “You’re not _that_ big,” Jason said, and clenched around him meaningfully.

“I bet you say that to all the boys.” Roy settled his hands on Jason’s hips, holding him in place, and drew out slowly before driving in hard. Jason gasped, and Roy smiled. “See, here’s the thing, Jaybird.” He kept up the same pace as he talked, slow drag out and hard thrust in. “You like to be the boss, but right now? I have you exactly where I want you. So if you want to get fucked, and I decide to give it to you nice and slow…well, you’ll just have to take it, won’t you?”

He could see Jason’s hands fisting in the sheets, could see the way the muscles in that beautiful back tensed. Jason could complain all he wanted, but from the way his cock was dripping onto the bed, Roy knew he was enjoying this as much as Roy was. “You’re a goddamn son of a bitch, Roy Harper.”

“Yeah, and we both know that’s why you like me.” Roy leaned forward, kissed up Jason’s neck until he could bite the shell of his ear. “Sorry, baby, but I’m gonna take my time with you tonight.”

And he did, maintaining that leisurely, _decadent_ tempo, luxuriating in the feeling of having Jason so hot and tight around him. Luxuriating in _everything_ : the way Jason’s shoulders moved as he braced himself; the spread of his thick, sturdy thighs; the breathy little grunts and gasps he let out as Roy fucked him. The way his dick twitched when Roy reached beneath him to stroke him lightly, so lightly—not enough to get him off, just enough to make him crazy before letting go and listening to the string of curses he unleashed.

“You got a filthy mouth, Jaybird,” Roy said after the third time he teased Jason almost but not quite to the edge, pressing his smile to Jason’s shoulder so he could feel it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason panted, head hanging down between his arms. “Keep laughing. I’m gonna… _hh_...get you back for this, Harper.”

“I look forward to it,” Roy said with complete honesty. If Jason wanted to wreak his revenge on Roy’s body tomorrow night—or hell, in an hour—Roy certainly wouldn’t complain.

He could have happily kept Jason there all night, but he was only human, and eventually he reached the point where he knew he couldn’t keep his own orgasm at bay for much longer. “You ready to come, baby?” he asked, wrapping his hand around Jason’s dripping cock.

Jason was down to his elbows now, his forehead braced against the mattress. “Promises, promises,” he mumbled, then jerked as Roy gave him a firm stroke in time with a hard snap of his hips. “Roy!”

“Shh, I got you,” Roy said, and proceeded to give Jason what he needed, hard and fast until Jason was sobbing his name and spilling into Roy’s hand. It proved too much for Roy; he came while Jason was still shivering through the aftershocks.

When he was finally able to think again, he realized he’d slumped forward and that Jason was—barely—holding up most of his weight. “Shit, sorry,” he said, and eased out. Jason flopped onto his side, and god, the fucked-out expression on his face was something worth remembering.

Roy was exhausted, the post-coital lethargy hitting him like a brick wall, but he got rid of the condom and cleaned them both up—he owed Jason that much after teasing him for so long. Then he flopped down next to Jason.

“...Gonna get up in a minute,” Jason mumbled.

Roy bit his lip. “Why bother?” he asked. “Bed’s big enough for two.”

There was a pause. “I’m _sweaty_.”

That was his finicky Jaybird. “If you can walk, let alone shower right now, I didn’t do my job.” Roy closed his eyes. As much as he enjoyed the sight of Jason naked, he didn’t feel like watching him walk out of the room. “It’s up to you. I gotta wash these sheets tomorrow either way.”

The silence that followed was so long Roy nearly fell asleep before being jerked back to alertness by a prodding finger. “You’re lying on the blanket. Move so we can get under the covers, you heathen.”

Roy shifted so that Jason could pull the blanket over both of them. When he cracked an eye open, he saw Jason rolling over to lie on his other side, facing away from Roy. He couldn’t help wondering what Jason would do if Roy curled up behind him, but before he could decide if he wanted to risk a punch in the nose for trying, he fell asleep.

*

Roy shut his eyes and tried to summon up some measure of control. He had been through dark times before. He’d quit heroin. He’d come through what could have been debilitating injuries. He’d been tortured multiple times and never broken.

After all of that, he had to be strong enough not to punch a thirteen-year-old kid in the nose. But lord, was he tempted.

“This is pointless,” Robin said, crouched beside him on the roof. “I should be by my father’s side, not saddled with the two most useless vigilantes currently slumming it in my city.”

“‘Currently?’” Spoiler asked. “I can’t speak for Will Scarlet here, but I’ve been slumming it in this city since before you were born, Damian.”

“Thank you, _Stephanie_ , for your heroic efforts to preserve my anonymity.”

“Oh, ease up.” Spoiler looked at Roy. “You’re shacked up with Jason, right? You’ve gotta know all our identities by now.”

“Uh.” Roy wasn’t going to touch the “shacked up” part, because he wasn’t sure how she meant it—but by the knowing look in her eye, he suspected addressing it would just be digging himself into a hole. “I’ve known about Dick and Bruce since I was thirteen, so yeah, most of you aren’t hard to extrapolate. Even without all the ‘my father this, my father that’ stuff.” That last was directed pointedly at Robin.

“ _Tt_.” Robin hunched deeper into his hood. “I should at least be in _charge_.”

Roy sighed. He’d known this night was going to be a headache the minute Bruce had called Jason in for an “all Bat-hands on deck” situation. The latest chucklehead calling himself Brother Blood had declared his plan to take over Gotham by having his cultists assassinate key city officials. Since Batman couldn’t be everywhere at once, he’d sent them out in teams—and he’d had the longer-running Titans take point, since they had the most experience with Brother Blood. Dick had taken Batgirl and Orphan to guard the police commissioner, Red Robin had taken Signal and an _extremely_ put-upon Jason to watch over the district attorney, and Roy had somehow ended up supervising the world’s angriest middle schooler while they waited for a religious cult to try to murder the city comptroller. He didn’t even really know what a comptroller _was_.

At least Spoiler had a sense of humor, although she seemed to mostly exercise it by tweaking Robin’s tail. “Sorry, kiddo. Gotta be this many Titan to lead, apparently.” She held her hands apart to demonstrate how many Titan Roy presumably was.

“I’m the _leader_ of the Titans,” Robin pointed out.

“Your team ever fight Brother Blood?” Roy asked.

Robin looked away. “Not yet.”

“That’s all this is,” Roy said. “If we were fighting one of your guys, I’m sure you would be in charge. Who do y’all fight these days, anyway?”

“Deathstroke.”

“...Yeah, no, that one’s still gonna be me.”

Spoiler suddenly tensed. “Hey, fun as this is, I think I just saw something moving in the comptroller’s living room, and our guy’s definitely still in bed.”

Roy drew a grappling arrow from his quiver. “All right, we’re gonna go in quiet and—and there he goes,” he said as Robin fired his grapple and swung towards the comptroller’s apartment.

Spoiler sprang up on the edge of the roof. “Did Jason not warn you B stuck you with the ones who don’t listen?” she asked before leaping after Robin.

“Kid, I know Dick and Jason, none of you listen,” Roy muttered, firing his arrow.

They reached the apartment before the cultists made it into the bedroom, where the comptroller and his wife were probably sound asleep before the noise of fighting broke out. There were a couple dozen cultists—Blood always did seem to like overdoing it, no matter who was using the name. Roy was glad he had backup, especially since Spoiler was good and Robin was downright _scary_ , as graceful as Dick and as vicious as Jason.

The fight was over quickly and Roy and Spoiler spent some time soothing the comptroller and his wife’s frazzled nerves while Robin paced. They waited for the GCPD to show up and haul the cultists away before returning to the Batcave.

When they got there, they found Dick and Jason in the middle of a shouting match.

“—reckless and you know it!” Dick yelled.

“Well, lucky for you, how I fight isn’t your problem!” Jason shot back.

Spoiler sidled up to the only observer, a very tired-looking Red Robin. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Babs stayed with her dad,” he said. “Cass and Duke took one look at this nightmare and booked it, because they have brains. I would have too, but I have to report to Bruce when he gets back.”

“It is when you endanger the rest of us!” Dick said.

“Hey, Tim was my field leader tonight, and I don’t hear any complaints from him!” Jason snapped.

Red Robin raised his hands. “Oh, no. I am _not_ getting in the middle of this.”

“Ugh. _Children_ ,” Robin snarled, and stalked up the stairs to the manor.

“If you spent two seconds thinking about someone besides yourself—” Dick started.

“Whoa, hey.” Roy knew Red Robin was probably right to stay out of it, but he found himself moving between his two closest friends anyway. “That’s not fair and you know it.”

“Stay out of this, Roy, please,” Dick said.

“Why should he?” Jason asked. “Come on, Dick, you’ve been up my ass since he got to town and you know it. This isn’t about tonight, it’s about _him_. What’s the matter? Don’t like the family disappointment playing with your toys?”

“Um, excuse me?” Roy asked. Yep. Definitely should have made like Red Robin. Or just bailed like the others.

“What I don’t like is you taking advantage of my friend’s good nature to put him in a situation where he could get hurt!” Dick said.

“Uh, newsflash, Dick, we all fight crime literally all the time,” Jason said. “Not sure why you’re suddenly freaking out about it now, but—”

“I’m not talking about the Red Hood crap,” Dick said. “You asked him to work in a _bar!_ ”

Roy stared at him, and even Jason seemed a little at a loss. “I...uh…”

“How much alcohol do you sell per night, Jason?” Dick asked. “How many people are doing lines in the bathroom while you’re playing crime boss? You weren’t even Robin yet when Roy was using, but I was there. I _saw_ what it did to him, I saw how hard he fought to be free of it. And you’re throwing him back into a situation where he has to deal with that shit constantly, every _night_ , just to feed your ego.”

“ _My_ ego?” Jason asked, recovering. “God, the pair on you. Did you ever consider the possibility that Roy’s an adult who can make his own decisions without getting your permission first?”

“Looking out for him isn’t making his decisions for him!”

“Treating him like he has no self control isn’t looking out for him!”

“Hey!” Roy snapped. “Do either of you remember I’m standing right here?”

Spoiler raised her hand. “I remember. You’re very cute.” Red Robin elbowed her. “What? He is.”

“Thank you, Spoiler,” Roy said, and turned back to his friends. “Jaybird, calm the hell down. Dick…” He sighed. “Jesus, man. This is why you kept asking me how everything was going, all careful-like, huh?”

Dick had the grace to look guilty. “I didn’t want to make it a whole thing. But I was worried.”

Roy took a minute to breathe. The last thing this mess needed was him losing his temper, too. “Yes, you were there when I was using,” he said. “You were _also_ there when I spent _literal years_ working narcotics cases for the government. I was surrounded by a hell of a lot worse than socialites drinking cosmos then, and you weren’t breathing down my neck every time I made a bust. So what changed?”

Dick didn’t look at Jason. He didn’t have to. “Roy…”

“Jason’s being an ass, but he’s right. You trust me to make my own decisions about what I can and can’t handle, or you don’t. And you _used_ to trust me.” Roy turned to Jason. “Where the hell’s the door to this maze? I want to go home.”

Jason looked a little shellshocked, but he jerked his head towards the exit, and Roy followed him. No one else said a word.

Jason was uncharacteristically subdued the whole way home. Roy didn’t push him. He had his own shit to work through.

He hadn’t really given the environment a second thought when he’d agreed to help Jason with the Iceberg Lounge. He’d known there would be a bar, and he’d made sure he was emotionally prepared for that, but it didn’t loom as large in his psyche as Dick apparently thought. After all, alcohol had never been his primary vice. He’d had an unhealthy relationship with it when he was using, but he’d had an unhealthy relationship with everything then. And he’d stopped drinking entirely a few years ago, when he realized he was leaning on it a little more than was probably good for him. He’d fought one addiction; he didn’t want to have to do it again.

And unlike most nightclubs, Jason had a strict no-drugs policy at the Lounge, one that the staff was encouraged to enforce with extreme prejudice. Sure, people still tried to get high, but they were usually summarily ejected as soon as they were caught. Roy had always assumed that had something to do with Jason’s mom, because Jason had never seemed interested in coddling Roy. But maybe that wasn’t the whole picture.

Back in their apartment, Jason dropped his helmet and gloves on the couch, and—shit. Roy had seen guilt from Dick before, but it was startlingly new on Jason’s face.

“Listen…” Jason said. “I didn’t really think about what it would be like for you, being at the Lounge all the time. If it’s not...if it’s too hard, I get it.”

Fuck. This was exactly what Roy didn’t want, had _never_ wanted—people treating him like he was broken because of his past. Jason never had before, but apparently he’d suddenly decided to listen to Dick for once in his life. Roy braced himself to be gently fired. For his own good, of course.

“Suzie can run the Lounge,” Jason went on. “You and me, we can leave town, go do something else.”

Roy blinked. The hell? This was Jason’s whole master scheme—he wasn’t seriously proposing dropping it to fuck off with Roy doing some Outlaws bullshit again, was he? Roy wasn’t sure if he should feel touched or concerned that Jason had sustained a head injury fighting the cultists.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “If it had been a problem, I would have said something. I meant what I said. I can make my own decisions. I don’t need to be taken care of.”

“I know you don’t.” But Jason still looked...not guilty, maybe, but like there was something about Roy he was trying to understand.

“Good.” Roy tossed his bow and quiver after Jason’s helmet. “Listen, this turned into a hell of a night, so can you do me a favor and give me something else to think about for like half an hour or so?”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “You have anything particular in mind?”

Roy dropped his bracers on the floor. “Surprise me.”

They ended up in Jason’s bed, uniform parts scattered along the way. Jason had said that he knew Roy didn’t need to be taken care of, but he was oddly gentle tonight, pushing Roy down and kissing him until he was dizzy with it before moving down to suck him sweet and slow. Roy would have protested over the uncharacteristic kid gloves treatment if Jason’s mouth hadn’t felt so good around him, his fingers stroking deep inside and winding Roy’s pleasure up and up until his toes curled.

When it was over, Roy planned to give his legs a couple minutes to start working again before giving Jason his bed back, but Jason dragged the blanket over them both while he was still trying to muster up the energy to leave. “I can go,” he offered, even though his eyes were already closing.

He felt an arm drape over his stomach. “Shut up,” Jason mumbled.

So he stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep thinking I should be like "Oops, this chapter is 90% porn" but that's every chapter. Or at least the first three. Sorry?


	4. Chapter 4

Jason wasn’t great at sleeping. Roy had known this—they’d lived in close quarters before—but the fact that they were sharing a bed almost every night these days put a whole different perspective on it. Even though they crashed late, Jason was almost always up and dressed before Roy cracked an eyelid open. He never asked what time Jason had gotten up—he suspected that either he wouldn’t like the answer, or Jason would just lie.

Jason had nightmares, too. Roy got it—after all, he had his own share of unpleasant things floating around in his subconscious. He’d wake Jason, remind him where he was, and rub his back until he fell asleep again. Once he’d been woken by Jason’s screams when they were sleeping in their own bedrooms, and he’d gotten into Jason’s bed and held him until he quieted.

He’d always find Jason at the kitchen table the next morning, all business already, gray circles under his eyes. They never talked about it.

A week or so after the Brother Blood incident, Roy woke up to find Jason still asleep, which was so shocking he checked Jason’s forehead first to make sure he wasn’t sick, and then his phone to see what time it was. It was barely eight, which meant they’d fallen asleep less than four hours ago. Definitely not time to get up yet.

He sank back against his pillow, rolling onto his side to face Jason. Jason was sleeping with his mouth open, drooling a little onto the pillow, and Roy took a stealthy picture of the scourge of the Gotham underworld snoring tiny, adorable snores before putting his phone back on the nightstand.

It was funny, he thought, looking at Jason. Ollie cracked wise a lot about Bruce collecting kids who were mini versions of him physically, but aside from the black hair and blue eyes—or green, in Damian’s case—none of them _actually_ looked that much like him, or each other. Damian, a little, but Jason said he looked more like his mother. Maybe when he grew into his jaw.

Dick and Jason both had black hair and blue eyes, but that was where the similarities ended. Dick was classically handsome, with a mouth that always seemed ready to smile and dimples that ought to be classified as lethal weapons. Jason’s features were less perfect, less balanced, almost too much in places, like he’d been painted by a heavy-handed artist: strong brows; that crooked nose; eyelashes so full and dark they looked unreal in the morning light. That sulky mouth, a little too lush and always turned down.

He didn’t have the trueness of Dick’s colors, either. Dick’s jet-black hair was straight out of a shampoo commercial and his eyes were such a bright, clear blue as to be frankly implausible. Jason’s hair, falling in loose, heavy curls against his pillow, betrayed itself by day, this close: not true black, but the deepest, darkest brown, almost reddish in tone—except for the white streak in the front, of course. And his eyes, Roy knew, were changeable: now stormy and gray, now dark, now almost green. It mostly had to do with what color shirt he was wearing, but there was something else to the changes, something Roy was still trying to puzzle out.

He was pondering the mystery when those eyes blinked, opened sleepily. Roy had lived in Ireland for a hot minute and had heard people speak appreciatively of “eyes put in with a sooty thumb.” He’d never really gotten the phrase before.

“...time is it?” Jason mumbled.

When Roy was still Speedy, back in the early days, he and Ollie used to go sailing on Star City Bay a lot. On summer afternoons, the water was the coolest blue-green imaginable, clear as glass, and Roy had felt like the good times would stretch as far as the water did, out into the Pacific and beyond the horizon. Jason’s eyes were that color now.

“It’s still early,” he replied, keeping his voice very soft. “Go back to sleep.”

Astonishingly, Jason did. Roy knew he should do the same; he’d be dead on his feet tonight with only three and a half hours of sleep.

Instead, he kept looking.

*

“Goddammit!”

Jason kicked his desk hard enough to leave a scuff mark on it and dropped back into his chair, one hand raking through his curls. The look on his face didn’t bode well for anyone they found breaking the law tonight.

Roy sat on the edge of Jason’s desk, facing him. He understood Jason’s frustration—hell, he shared it. They’d been pacing the office at the Iceberg Lounge for over an hour, trying to figure out who the mysterious crime lord amassing power in Gotham’s underworld was. But despite all the leads they’d taken from the club and all the heads they’d knocked in on the streets, they were no closer than they’d been when Roy had first come to Gotham.

“Hey,” he said. “We’ll get there. These things take time.”

“How much time?” Jason asked. “Until he’s dug into the city’s infrastructure? Until the courts won’t touch him? The last thing we need is another Carmine Falcone.”

“Maybe whoever he is will kill Carmine Falcone and then we’ll only have one headache,” Roy joked. Jason made a face at him. “I know, I know. Just trying to keep you from popping a blood vessel.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “You coddling me, Harper?”

“Never.” Roy poked Jason’s calf with the toe of his shoe, gently. Jason sighed and let his hand drop to Roy’s knee.

“Sorry,” he said finally. “I just...if we can’t stop him, what’s the point of any of this?” His spread hands encompassed the Iceberg Lounge and all it stood for. “All the months of this stupid pageantry, trying to play things Bruce’s way, trying to…” His lips pressed together in a thin line, as if he’d just realized he’d almost admitted he cared what Bruce thought.

It would be good for him to talk about it, probably, but Roy didn’t know how to be the person he talked _to_. This friendship was based on an understanding that they were mutually fucked up, not any real attempts to do anything about it. Bruce went in the same box as the Joker and Jason’s parents and Ollie and addiction and how Roy really felt about Dick—on the top shelf of a precariously overstuffed closet that they would never, ever clean out.

So he bunted. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten a shit-ton of orgasms out of it.”

Jason barked out a laugh. “Christ, Roy,” he said, and reached for Roy’s tie with the hand that wasn’t on Roy’s knee, drawing him down into a kiss.

This was...new. Jason had never kissed him outside of their apartment, or when they weren’t screwing around or just about to. Roy wasn’t complaining—kissing Jason under any circumstances was a privilege he was very glad to enjoy—but he _was_ mildly surprised.

Then the hand on his knee slid up his thigh, very purposefully. Ah. So this was still about screwing around.

“Jay,” he breathed as Jason’s hand cupped him through his pants.

“Mm?” Jason tucked his fingers into Roy’s waistband and tugged gently, guiding Roy off the desk and down to straddle his lap.

“We’re in the office.” Not that it stopped Roy from digging his fingers into those already-mussed curls, tilting Jason’s head so he could really kiss him properly.

Jason’s fingers were already undoing Roy’s belt. “I’m aware.”

“Mmm...I don’t think the door is locked.” Roy’s dick didn’t care. Roy’s dick knew Jason _very_ well and was hardening quickly under his familiar touch.

“Oh, it’s definitely not.”

Roy panted against Jason’s cheek as Jason stroked him. “They might be able to see us from the floor.” It wasn’t overwhelmingly likely, but one wall of the office _was_ glass, looking down over the nightclub floor, and if someone happened to stand in exactly the right place and look up at exactly the right time…

Jason nipped at Roy’s lower lip, teasing. “Wouldn’t that just be a shame?”

That was the _point_ , Roy realized. That any of their patrons could just _happen_ to look up. That one of the Su sisters or anyone else on staff could just _happen_ to walk into the office and find Roy writhing and exposed in Jason’s lap. Jason was getting off on the idea of someone catching him having his way with Roy.

The thought lit Roy up like lightning.

“Well,” he said, and shifted his weight to rub against Jason’s erection through his pants, “not _that_ much of a shame.”

*

“Well, if it isn’t the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Donna looked up from her book at the sound of Roy’s voice and beamed. Standing, she gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Hello there, battling bowman,” she said. “It’s been too long.”

“Way too long,” Roy agreed, sitting across from her as she returned to her chair. “You said you’re only in Gotham a little while?”

She shook her head. “Just overnight, for a photoshoot. Then it’s back to DC. I’m glad you had time to meet for coffee. You sure you can’t join me and Dick for dinner?”

“Sorry. You guys aren’t eating until after I go on the clock.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re not avoiding him? You guys were butting heads a bit in San Francisco.”

“Nah, we’re fine.” They were. True, Roy hadn’t seen Dick since the night Brother Blood had attacked, but Dick had called the next morning, falling all over himself to apologize. Roy, lazy and content in Jason’s bed, hadn’t had the heart to stay indignant with him. He knew Dick’s concerns came from a place of caring. It wasn’t his fault if Bruce had taught him to believe his way was the only way and to throw a fit whenever anyone resisted falling in line. Jason was the same way, after all; it was just that for whatever reason it didn’t put Roy’s back up when Jason got domineering. Maybe because he hadn’t been dealing with it since they were kids.

Donna waved a hand in front of his face. “ _Are_ you fine? Because you’re woolgathering.”

Roy blinked. “Sorry, just...thinking about something else. Tell me about this shoot you’re booked for.”

They talked for a while about Donna’s photography work, about what Roy was doing at the Iceberg Lounge, about stupid things they’d done when they were teenagers. God, it was good to just _relax_ with Donna, without the pressure of having all the Titans together and the complicated weight of their combined history.

Eventually Donna gave him a knowing smile over the rim of her coffee cup. “So who’s the girl?” she asked.

“Come on, Wonder Chick, you know you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved,” Roy said.

It was a joke, but maybe Donna didn’t have to laugh _quite_ so long or loud at the concept.

“Okay, fine,” she said when she’d calmed down, wiping a tear away. “Who’s the boy?”

“Who says there’s anyone?”

“Besides everything about you since you were thirteen?” She pointed to his neck. “Hickey.”

“Ah, shit.” He thought his collar had hidden that. Dammit, he’d _told_ Jason, but then Jason had lowered himself down onto Roy’s dick and everything after that had gotten...hazy. He eased the collar up slightly. “It’s nothing.”

Donna looked unconvinced.

“No, really, it’s nothing serious. We’re just fooling around. I’m not seeing anyone.”

“You know...it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you were,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.

“Don’t. Please.” Donna was the only person he ever talked to about this. Maybe that was weird, given their own history together, but they’d all known each other for so long, and Donna had always seen right through him. Right now, though, he wasn’t in the mood.

“It’s just, it’s been a while for you,” she said. “And the last serious relationship you had was with his _ex_. That’s not healthy, Roy.”

“Since when have I ever been healthy?” he asked. She glared at him. “Okay, fine, bad joke. Look, whatever’s between me and Dick, or isn’t...it is what it is, okay? Maybe I still have a thing for him. But I promise I’m not putting my life on hold over it.”

“Aren’t you?” she asked. “It’s been years. You could say something to him, you know.”

“Ha, and also: ha.”

She picked up his hand and wrapped both of hers around it. “Sweetie, I love you, so I’m going to share with you some Amazon wisdom, bequeathed to us by the goddess Athena herself: shit or get off the pot.”

“You know it turns me on when you curse.”

“Roy.”

“I know,” he said, sighing. “I know. You’re probably right. I just…” It would throw everything out of balance. His friendship with Dick, what he’d built with Jason, everything. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and he knew she didn’t believe him.

“I _will_.”

“All right.” She smiled at him, and yeah, Roy had actually managed to get over this one, but lord almighty would she always have a special place in his heart. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am,” he promised, and for once it didn’t even really feel like a lie.

*

Dick opened one of the nine thousand identical doors to one of the ten identical wings of Wayne Manor with a flourish. “You can sleep here,” he said. “Bathroom’s across the hall, it’s a guest one so use whatever you need. Alfred keeps everything stocked with spare toothbrushes, towels, whatever.”

“Thanks,” Roy said, biting back a yawn. It had been another all-hands-on-deck night, this one involving an alien invasion. Dick had fussed until Jason and Roy had agreed to come back to the cave to let Alfred look over their various minor injuries, and now it was four in the morning and there didn’t seem to be any point in trying not to fall asleep on their way home when Jason had his own bedroom at the manor and there were plenty of extra rooms.

“Hey, listen,” Dick said. “I really am sorry about...you know. Being on your case about the nightclub.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Roy said. “Again. I mean, thanks, but it was really Jason you were giving shit to.”

“I know. I tried to talk to him, but…” Dick shrugged. “He doesn’t listen to me.”

“You ever try talking _with_ him instead of _to_ him?” Roy asked.

Dick sighed. “Okay, yeah, maybe that’s fair. He just gets me so...ugh. You know.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Anyway, the point is, I’m sorry that I was an ass, to _both_ of you. I know I already said it, but I shouldn’t have been trying to micromanage your sobriety. I do trust your judgment, really.”

“I know,” Roy said. “And thank you for saying it again, but you’re already forgiven, so get the hell out of here and let me get some sleep, okay?”

Dick grinned that toothpaste-commercial grin. “Yeah. Night, Roy.”

“Night.”

Dick sauntered off down the hall to his own room, and Roy stepped into the guest room and closed the door. He’d just gotten his boots off when his phone buzzed with a text from Jason.

_Come here._

Roy tapped out a response: _what the hell room are you in? if I go into damian’s by accident he’ll stab me._

_Cant believe youre afraid of a 13 year old._

_i’m not afraid. i’m just accurately stating what would happen and you know it._

_Ugh. Open your door._

Roy stuck his head out of the guest room. Jason was leaning against the doorframe of another room, all the way down the hall in the same direction Dick had gone, wearing only his boxer briefs. He crooked a finger at Roy.

Feeling ridiculously furtive, Roy made his way down the hall as quietly as he could without tiptoeing cartoonishly. “What’s up, Jaybird? We breaking curfew?” he whispered.

Jason rolled his eyes and pulled Roy into his room, closing the door quietly behind him. “For a supposed bad boy, you’re a huge dork.”

He kept his voice low, so Roy did too. “You say this like it’s news. Wait...is this the room you had when you were Robin?”

Jason nodded. Roy did a slow circle around the room, taking it all in: high school textbooks on the bookshelf, posters for bands and athletes years out of date, a baseball and mitt on the desk next to an elderly laptop. There was a gleaming set of hubcaps mounted on one wall; Roy thought he could guess what car those had come from.

“Wow, this place is a time capsule,” he murmured, picking up a framed photo from the desk. Jason, Dick, and Bruce, with Jason looking so young it made Roy’s chest clench. He and Dick were grinning at the camera and even Bruce had what appeared to be a genuine smile on his face. No wonder someone—Alfred, probably—had framed it.

“Can you blame me for never wanting to sleep here?” Jason asked, coming up behind him. “It’s like rooming with a ghost.” He reached around Roy to pluck the photo out of his hands and put it back down on the desk, then smoothed his hands down Roy’s stomach. “Wanna help me exorcise it?”

“Why, Jason Peter Todd,” Roy said, biting back a smile. “Are you suggesting we engage in carnal acts in your childhood bedroom? With your family sleeping in the next rooms?”

“Only Dick and Tim are in this wing, and Tim’s closer to your room,” Jason said. “Bruce and Alfred are in the east wing and Damian’s not even on this floor because he’s a paranoid weirdo.”

“A Bat who’s a paranoid weirdo. What are the odds.”

Jason’s hands slid lower. “No one will hear us if we’re quiet,” he promised. His lips brushed Roy’s ear. “That is, if you think you can _keep_ quiet.”

Roy’s eyes closed as Jason stroked him through his pants, his teeth tugging gently on Roy’s earlobe. “Is that a challenge?”

“Mm...what do you think?”

They shouldn’t. Roy was exhausted, and he was already going to be sore in the morning thanks to fighting the stupid aliens, and he knew Dick was a light sleeper.

But _fuck_ , Jason’s hands felt good.

Roy turned his head until he could meet Jason’s eye. “I say it’s a good thing Bruce is a lunatic who supplies all his twelve-year-old orphans with king-size beds.”

Jason had him on that bed in an instant, those perfect hands making short work of what was left of Roy’s clothing. Roy’s exhaustion vanished, burned to cinders by the heat of Jason’s mouth, his urgency, the sparking green in his eyes.

For someone who had suggested quiet, Jason seemed to be doing his best to make Roy scream. Especially after he dumped Roy onto his front and got two thick fingers inside him with the help of the travel pack of lube he’d apparently been carrying around all night—and Roy would have some questions about _that_ when he could think about anything but how fucking good Jason’s fingers felt against his prostate.

Jason took him on his knees and elbows, hard and fast and god, Roy could do this every night and die happy. He pushed back against Jason’s thrusts, loving the size of him, the bruising grip of his fingers on Roy’s hips.

Jason bent forward over his back, shifting inside of him, and Roy groaned before he caught himself. “Shh,” Jason said, sounding breathless and amused. “I know you love this, but we don’t want to wake anyone, remember?”

Roy panted raggedly into the pillow. “You… _hh_...absolute _bastard_. You’re doing this on purpose.”

Jason’s chuckle was low and rich and rolled up Roy’s spine like electricity. “Not my fault if you can’t get enough of my dick.” He kissed the back of Roy’s neck, fucked into him hard at an angle that had Roy seeing stars, and Roy had always thought biting the pillow was just an expression but now he was grabbing for it because otherwise at least two Bats were going to hear him screaming Jason’s name at four in the morning.

Jason reached for his dick. “Don’t worry, baby,” he said, his hand moving in time with his thrusts, “I’ll let you be as loud as you want when I fuck you again at home,” and Roy thought _baby, he called me baby_ as he sobbed a muffled cry into the pillow, and then his orgasm rippled through him and he wasn’t thinking about anything at all.

*

It was on an ordinary afternoon about a week later that it all fell apart.

They were killing time before work, watching some stupid movie that happened to be on TV and procrastinating on putting away the leftover Chinese takeout from lunch. Roy had his legs draped across Jason’s lap, and he found himself increasingly less interested in the movie and more interested in the way Jason’s fingers were trailing higher and higher up his calves.

“Those hands have a destination in mind?” he asked finally.

Jason gave him a lazy smile. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

A minute later, Roy had Jason pinned against the arm of the couch, rolling his hips against Jason’s lap while they traded slow, easy kisses. The TV was still on and the movie had just gotten to an extremely noisy car chase, which was why neither of them, despite being trained from childhood to be alert to danger, heard anything until a set of keys hit the floor.

Roy sprang backward, reaching for the nearest projectile and finding only the remote, and Jason rolled into a fighting crouch.

Dick was standing in their living room, looking shocked.

“Uh,” he said. “Hi. I...sorry?”

Jason relaxed visibly, but Roy felt himself break out in a cold sweat. _Oh no, oh no no no…_

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jason asked.

“Alfred made cookies,” Dick said. It sounded so inane Roy had to bite down on his laughter, because if he started now he knew he wouldn’t stop. “I offered to bring some by. I borrowed his emergency keys. Thought I’d surprise you.”

“Yeah, next time ring the fucking doorbell,” Jason said.

“Uh, noted. Sorry.” Dick’s eyes flickered from Jason to Roy and back again. “I didn’t realize you two were, uh, together. This actually answers a lot of questions, now that I think about it. I—”

“We’re not,” Roy blurted out. His voice came out way too loud.

“What?” Dick asked. Jason looked over his shoulder at Roy, his expression blank.

“We’re not together. Not, like, as a _thing_ ,” Roy said. He needed to make sure Dick understood. He _knew_ Dick, and if Roy was Jason’s, that would make him off limits in Dick’s mind. “We’re just fooling around, right, Jaybird? It doesn’t _mean_ anything.”

Jason looked at Dick, then back at Roy. “Sure,” he said. “You know me.” But he said it flat, without the breeziness Roy would have expected, and his face was still inscrutable.

Dick was watching them with a concerned look on his face. “Uh...right,” he said. “Listen, I don’t want to get in the middle of anything…”

“There’s nothing to get in the middle of!” Roy assured him. He had a feeling he sounded a little frantic, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Come on, me and Jason? I know you think we both have shitty judgment, but there are some mistakes even _we_ won’t make.”

Jason’s eyebrows went up. “Wow.”

“Hey, I said both of us!” Roy said. “And you were the one who said this was just physical in the first place.”

“Yeah, apparently I really helped you dodge a bullet there.” Jason was still very calm, which was not a good sign.

Dick seemed to know it too, because he took a step back. “Listen, it sounds like maybe this is a conversation that doesn’t need an audience, so I’m gonna just…” He jerked his thumb towards the door. “Again, really sorry for not knocking.”

“Dick, wait,” Roy started.

“Don’t worry, Roy,” Jason said. “He gets it. You’re fully available if he ever decides to go slumming.”

Roy stared at him, taken aback by the acid in his tone. Then he realized what Jason had just given away and looked in horror at Dick.

Who seemed abjectly mortified. “Yeah. Definitely going,” he said. “Sorry again.” And he was gone.

Roy turned back to Jason, who had resumed his seat on the couch and was reaching for the remote Roy had dropped. “What the fuck, Jason?”

“What?” Jason asked. “Oh, did I make a mistake? Oops, there goes that _shitty judgment_ of mine again.”

“What, you’re pissed about that?” Roy asked. “Come on, we’re the fuck-ups, remember? That’s our whole thing! And again, _you_ were the one who said this was just physical!”

“And you jumped right on that opportunity, didn’t you?” Jason asked. “Any chance to get your rocks off, right, Speedy?”

“I didn’t hear you complaining!” Roy snapped. “And if you were just fucking me because I was easy, why are you playing the wounded lover card now? Don’t tell me the big bad Red Hood is getting sentimental on me.”

“Over you? Please,” Jason scoffed. “That doesn’t mean I have to like listening to you assure the Golden Boy that you wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole if you had any better options.”

“That is _not_ what I meant!” Roy said, stung. “And you didn’t have to drag Dick into this.”

“Drag him?” Jason repeated with a bitter laugh. “He’s been here the whole time, and we both know it. News flash, Roy: you’re not as subtle as you think you are. If he was going to bite, it would have happened years ago. Stop embarrassing yourself.”

It wasn’t anything Roy hadn’t told himself a hundred times before. It still knocked the air out of him worse than if Jason had hit him. And Roy had been trained since he was twelve years old to do one thing when he got hit: fight back.

“Embarrassing myself?” he asked. “I might never be _with_ Dick, but at least I also know I’ll never _be_ him. I’m not the one running some ridiculous long game to try to earn Batman’s approval. We’re talking about news flashes? Here’s yours: you’re never gonna win that one, Jay. Dick’s always gonna be the better man.”

Jason actually flinched at that, and Roy hated himself a little—but then the flinch was gone like it had never existed and Jason was himself again, all carelessness and anger. “Well, I may be the shitty bargain bin ex-Robin, but I’m the one you were happy to bend over for, so what does that say about you?”

Roy blinked at him as a few things clicked into place. “Oh my god. Was I just some...some fucked up power move in your weird competition with him?” Jason looked away, which was answer enough. “The other night, at the manor. You _wanted_ him to hear, didn’t you? What the _fuck_ , Jason? Were you just using me to get back at him?”

Jason looked at him then, and his eyes were as close to pure blue as they’d ever been, and totally unreachable. “Well, you were just using me to forget him, so I guess it worked out for both of us, didn’t it?”

Roy shook his head. “I didn’t come to Gotham for him. I came for _you_. But not like this.” He headed for the door. “Good luck with the Lounge, Jason. I’m out.”

If Jason said anything, Roy couldn’t hear it over the door slamming behind him.

*

The last person Roy wanted to see after all of that was Dick, but he knew he couldn’t put off talking to him, not after what Jason had said. He headed uptown to Dick’s apartment, dreading the upcoming conversation every step of the way. He let himself wallow in the dread, though; it was better than thinking about what had just happened, about what he and Jason had said to each other.

How could he have said that Dick was the better man? Jason might play the bad boy, but he tried so hard to do what he thought was right. No one knew that better than Roy. And to bring up _Bruce_ like that? What had he been thinking?

It was rhetorical, of course. He knew exactly what he’d been thinking, the same way that when he feared for his life he instinctively reached for the most destructive arrow in his quiver. Jason had hurt him, and he’d wanted to hurt Jason back.

He didn’t even know why Jason’s words had cut so deeply. What had Jason even said? That he had no chance with Dick? That he was easy? It wasn’t anything Roy didn’t know.

And it wasn’t like he’d had any illusions about the sexual aspect of his relationship with Jason. They’d made it clear early on, both of them, that it was purely physical. If Jason had fucked him because he was nearby and available, well, Roy was used to that. There was no reason to take it personally.

But he didn’t like being used. And he didn’t like the way Jason had looked at him. Like he was pathetic. Contemptuous.

Plenty of people had looked down on Roy before. But Jason had never been one of them.

Dick’s place was nowhere near Jason’s, but Roy still reached it long before he was ready. But fuck it—he was a superhero, wasn’t he? And he’d put this off long enough.

He rang the buzzer to Dick’s apartment.

“Who is it?” Dick called over the intercom.

“It’s me. Roy.”

“Oh! Uh, come on up.”

The lock clicked open and Roy let himself in, took the elevator up to Dick’s floor. Dick was waiting in the doorway of his apartment, looking uncertain and sheepish.

“Hey,” Roy said. “Can we talk?”

They sat on a little terrace overlooking Gotham’s crooked streets, warm in the late afternoon sun. Roy stared at his hands, unsure of how to begin.

Dick, of course, leaped in first, a Flying Grayson to the end. “I really am sorry for barging in like that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to cause a problem.”

“It’s fine. It wasn’t your fault,” Roy said.

“So how long have you two been...uh…”

“We’ve been sleeping together since a little after I came to Gotham,” Roy said, because it was easier to just say it straight out. “We were just friends before that. We were just friends _during_ that, just...also having sex. It wasn’t anything more than that.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “That’s not the vibe I got today.”

“It got...complicated.”

“Clearly.” Dick wasn’t as good at deadpan as Jason, but he could still nail it when he tried. “You know, it’s funny. I mean, I knew you were friends with Jason, obviously. Especially after this latest time with the Titans. You talk about him a lot, you know?”

Roy blinked. “I do?”

“Oh, yeah. Wally wouldn’t stop bitching about it.”

“Wally bitches about everything.”

“True.” Dick shrugged. “Anyway, like I was saying. I knew you were friends, but I guess I never realized how close you were until you moved to town and I never saw you because you were too busy with Jason. I have to admit, I was jealous. You were supposed to be _my_ friend. I know that’s stupid, but it kind of felt like Jason stole you from me.” He gave Roy a sidelong glance. “But I guess it was different, wasn’t it? What you two had. It wasn’t just friendship.”

“Not...that different.” Roy sighed. “Look, can we stop dancing around it? You heard what Jason said. About you.”

Dick didn’t look away, which Roy appreciated. “I heard what he implied. I’m not assuming anything until I hear it from you.”

“Right.” Roy took a deep breath. “I have feelings for you. Not just platonic ones.”

“Oh. I, uh, I didn’t know. Really.” Dick actually looked guilty, because of course he would feel guilty about this. “Uh, is this a recent development or…?”

Roy laughed, a little bitterly. “How long ago did we form the Titans?”

“ _Oh._ Um.” Now Dick just looked lost.

“Don’t worry about it,” Roy said, looking back at his hands. “I never said anything. How were you supposed to know? To be honest, I’m glad I wasn’t as obvious as Jason thought I was.” But then, Jason had always seen right through him.

“Roy, I’m…” Dick paused, but his tone on those two words alone was enough to tell Roy what he was about to say. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel the same. You’re one of my best friends, and I love you, but...not like that.”

And that was that.

Except maybe it didn’t have to be. “Wait,” Roy said, reaching for him. He knew he sounded a little desperate, but he was past caring. “Wait. Can I just...can we just...try?”

His fingertips landed on Dick’s jaw, turning his face toward him. Dick let him. Roy leaned in and saw those clear blue eyes shut, just before he kissed him.

Maybe Dick felt more than he thought he did, or maybe he was just a good sport, but he kissed Roy back—gently, softly, close-mouthed and sweet. The delicate, careful first kiss Roy had been dreaming about since he was too young to even put a name to his sexuality. It was exactly how he had always imagined it.

And he felt nothing.

He pulled back. Looked at his fingers on Dick’s elegant jawline, the soft dark hair falling perfectly over his brow, the graceful bow of his mouth.

And he found himself wishing that gentleness gone, those eyes less blue and more changeable, that mouth wicked and sulky by turns. For someone else entirely to be sitting here next to him, with Roy touching his face.

“Holy shit,” he said. “I’m in love with Jason.”

Dick blinked. “Well,” he said, straightening up. “I can honestly say that’s the first time I’ve heard that after kissing someone.”

“I...shit!” Roy said, raking his hands through his hair. His heart was pounding, and not for the reason he would have expected. “What the fuck did I just do?”

Dick started to put a hand on his shoulder, then pulled back, a concerned look on his face. “I’m gonna give you a minute and, uh...go make us some coffee. Or something.”

He went back inside the apartment. Roy stared numbly in front of him. Dreaming of kissing Dick? Had he actually been doing that since he’d come to Gotham? Had he been doing that for _years?_ Or had it just felt familiar to be in love with him, and so he’d never questioned if he still was?

He hadn’t had to dream, not these past few months. He’d had Jason filling every hour, waking or otherwise—Jason’s fierce smile, the heat of him, the intoxicating sharpness. The way he touched Roy like he couldn’t get enough of him. The way he fought for what was his, bloody-minded and defiant.

That was why what Jason had said today had hurt so badly. Roy didn’t want Jason to have been with him because he was better than nothing. He wanted Jason to have been with him because he _wanted_ Roy. Just Roy.

And maybe it hadn’t just been mentioning Bruce that had hurt Jason back. Maybe the hurt had started when Dick walked in and Roy pushed Jason away.

Roy needed to talk to him.

He stood up and went back into the apartment, where he found Dick taking mugs out of a cabinet. “I have to go,” he said. “I have to talk to him, I’m sorry, I...fuck, I’m being an asshole. I just _kissed_ you and then—“ He caught himself. “I sound insane, don’t I?”

“Little bit.” Dick’s smile was wry and fond in equal measure as he folded his arms and leaned against the kitchen counter. “You thought you were in love with me and just fooling around with Jason, but kissing me made you realize you were over me and _actually_ in love with Jason instead, because you’re not as good at separating sex and love as you always think you are.”

Hearing it said out loud like that made Roy feel even stupider. “Uh...yeah. That.”

“I’m a detective. I do get there eventually.” Dick’s smile went a little more rueful. “Not sure how I feel about apparently being an epically terrible kisser, but I’ll get over it.”

“You’re not a _bad_ kisser,” Roy said apologetically, mortified anew. “You’re just not...uh…”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. I don’t need the full comparative analysis, he’s family,” Dick said, making a face. He waved Roy away. “Go on, get out of here.”

But Roy hovered in the kitchen doorway. “Dick..are _we_ okay?”

Dick’s expression was soft, and for the first time that made Roy feel grounded instead of jittery. “Yeah. This has been a _weird_ day and maybe we need to talk about some stuff later, but it can wait. We’re good.”

“Good,” Roy said, relieved, and headed for the door.

“Oh, and Harper?” Dick called, and Roy paused, looking back. “Hurt my little brother again and I’ll kick your ass.”

Roy pointed at him. “See, I _told_ him you’d threaten me.”

“He’s just a boy! He’s sensitive! Tell him I said that!”

“I will not!”

“Coward!”

Roy was still laughing as he went out the door.

*

Jason wasn’t at their apartment when Roy returned, which wasn’t too surprising—it was late enough in the day that they would have been thinking about heading into work by now, and after the conversation they’d had, Roy suspected Jason would rather be _doing_ something than sitting and stewing.

He hurried off to the Lounge, anticipation buzzing under his skin. He tried to rein it in. This could still go badly. Jason could want nothing to do with him. But he thought...he _hoped_ …

The searchlights were out at the Iceberg Lounge.

Roy frowned as he made his way down the pier. _All_ of the lights were out, he could see as he got closer. True, it was early, but a few of the staff should be there by now. Had Jason closed up shop entirely?

Then he realized that the front door was open.

He broke into a run. That door was _always_ shut—locked when the club was closed, guarded by a bouncer when they were open. An open door and lights out couldn’t mean anything good.

He slowed as he reached the door, listened for movement inside. The last thing he needed was to step in and get ambushed. But he heard nothing.

His worst fears were confirmed when he walked in. The sun was setting and it was still light enough to see that the club had been trashed—furniture overturned, glasses smashed everywhere. “Jason?” he called. There was no answer.

He wanted to run upstairs and check the office, but he forced himself to look in the kitchen first—the staff there always reported in the earliest. He found three employees on the ground, but a quick check told him they were unconscious, not dead. A minor miracle—whoever had hit the Lounge had been playing for keeps.

Dread pooled in his stomach as he took the stairs two at a time. The door to the office hung open at a crazy angle, wrenched half off of its hinges. “Jason!” Roy shouted, praying for an answer, praying for a miracle.

He didn’t get one. There was no one in the office, which was worse than downstairs—the furniture splintered, blood splattered everywhere. Too much for it to all be Jason’s. Please, god, let it not be Jason’s.

He fumbled for his phone and dialed Jason’s number. It rang—in Roy’s ear, and from under the desk. Jason’s phone was still here, which meant he hadn’t gone of his own free will, as if the unconscious kitchen staff abandoned downstairs didn’t already tell Roy that.

Someone had taken him.

And all Roy could do was pray they hadn’t already killed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 😰😈


	5. Chapter 5

Roy dialed Dick’s number with shaking fingers. Dick picked up immediately. “Did you tell him I said he’s sensitive?”

“He’s gone,” Roy said. “I’m at the Lounge and it’s—someone came, they took him and there’s blood everywhere, I can’t—”

“Roy.” The flippancy was gone from Dick’s voice. “ _Arsenal._ What happened?”

His codename changed things, pushed the panic into something more manageable, as Dick had known it would. Roy dealt with situations like this all the time. He could handle this. Even if it was Jason.

Oh god, Jason…

His fingers tightened on his phone. “Someone hit the Lounge. A lot of someones, I’m assuming, if they could take Jason down. There’s three unconscious employees downstairs, no Jason, and a lot of blood. His phone is still here.”

“I’m calling Bruce in,” Dick said. “Leave the office for him. Help the employees. I’ll be there with your gear as soon as possible.”

Roy shut his eyes. “Dick…”

“We’ll get him back. I promise.” Dick didn’t usually get as scary as Bruce or Jason, but his voice right now didn’t bode well for whoever had come after Jason.

Even then, they’d be lucky if Dick got to them before Roy did.

He left the office untouched, though he hated to do it. He was a decent detective, but he knew he wasn’t in the same league as the Bats, and the last thing Jason needed was Roy compromising the evidence before they could figure out who’d taken him and where.

And _why_ , Roy added as he went back down the stairs toward the kitchen. The kidnappers—he had to think _kidnappers_ , couldn’t think _killers—had_ taken Jason Todd, not the Red Hood. Did they know the two were one and the same? Or was there another motive?

He was able to rouse the kitchen staff easily enough, thankfully, but none of them had seen anything. They’d all let themselves in through the back entrance; the front door had been locked, until it suddenly slammed open. Something had been hurled through the kitchen door, and that was all they remembered. Roy found the spent sleeping gas capsule under the fridge and saved it in case it helped Batman in any way. He moved the staffers into the main room where the air was fresher and got some water in them, torn between calling 911 for them and wanting to keep the cops out as long as possible.

There wasn’t anything that told him that Batman had arrived upstairs. He just _knew_ , somehow—a disruption in the air, a change in the tone of the building.

“Stay here,” he told the staffers, and went upstairs.

Sure enough, Batman was already at work in the office, examining the splatter pattern of one particular spray of blood. “What do you know?” he asked without looking up.

“If I knew who had taken him or where, I would already be there,” Roy said, shoulders tightening. No matter how many times he met Batman, he always seemed to forget just how offputting he could be. No wonder Jason was so fucked up. “We knew there was a new player behind the scenes, amassing power before announcing themselves.”

“I’m aware.”

Of course he was. “We’ve been trying to figure out who they are, but so far, nothing. But that’s as Red Hood. If it’s them, I don’t know why they’d come after Jason as himself.”

Batman gave him that blank-lensed glare over his shoulder. “Maybe because the Red Hood and Jason Todd both have a partner with no functional secret identity?”

Roy took a defensive step back, even as a tendril of guilty fear uncurled in his stomach. “Wait, you’re saying this is _my_ fault? It’s _your_ city. How did anyone even _get_ this far?”

“Why weren’t you _here?_ ” Batman snapped. “The only reason I even let you operate in Gotham is to watch Jason’s back, so _why didn’t you?_ ”

“Hey!” Dick stepped in behind Roy, already in costume. “Enough. This isn’t helping Jason.” He handed Roy his bundled gear. “The others are already on the streets. Alfred’s coordinating back home. We’ll find him.”

Roy gave a short nod and stepped into the bathroom to change. When he came back, Dick was holding Jason’s phone and saying: “...can hack it, but it would be faster if I knew his passcode.”

“It’s oh-four-two-seven,” Roy said.

Dick and Batman exchanged glances. “The day he died,” Bruce said.

“That sounds like Jason,” Dick said. He looked at Roy. “Maybe it wasn’t under the desk by accident. Maybe he left us a message.”

Roy leaned against the doorframe. He suddenly felt very tired. “You can check,” he said. “But I doubt it. Do you really think Jason believes any of us would come for him?”

Batman’s shoulders tightened visibly, and Dick looked anguished. Roy felt a little bad for pointing it out, but it paled beside the guilt of knowing he was the reason Jason would have felt he had nothing. Maybe Jason couldn’t believe that the Bats cared, but he had trusted Roy to have his back. He’d said so, or come as close to saying it as he was capable of. And Roy had walked out on him.

Sure enough, there was nothing useful on Jason’s phone. Roy belatedly remembered the gas capsule in his pocket and showed it to Dick, who got a very thoughtful look on his face. “What?” Roy asked.

“Whoever took Jason didn’t throw this,” Dick said. “Jason did. This is Red Robin’s design.”

“Wait, what does that mean?” Roy asked, and then answered his own question. “He knew they were coming, and he wanted to keep the staffers out of it, so they didn’t get hurt. That explains why the kidnappers didn’t kill them.”

“So whoever took him, it was someone Jason would have seen and known immediately they were after him,” Dick continued. “Someone with a grudge.”

“It wasn’t the Joker,” Batman said, addressing the fear Roy hadn’t dared to voice aloud. “That was the first thing I checked. He’s still in Arkham.”

“Batgirl confirmed that Penguin is still in a coma,” Dick said. “Who else…”

And then Roy knew. “Black Mask.”

Batman and Dick exchanged another glance, somehow conveying worlds of information through blank lenses. Roy could do that with Ollie, with Jason, even with Dick, but it was still weird to watch from the outside. “He dropped off the radar months ago,” Bruce said. “I’d meant to run him down, but hadn’t prioritized because of the damage he did to his brain with the techno-organic virus. I didn’t think he was a major threat.”

“Jason was never sure if the virus made Black Mask forget his identity,” Roy said. He hadn’t been around for that particular debacle, but Jason had told him about it. At the time, he’d been split between amusement and horror at how bullheadedly reckless Jason could be. Now he just felt sick. “I guess now we know.”

“And you guys have been tracking someone who uses organized crime. Not the usual costumed robbery or spree-killing. He fits the profile,” Dick said.

“Black Mask,” Batman agreed.

“The question is, where would he have taken Jason?”

Batman straightened up. Roy had known him since he was twelve, had been there through all the conflict with Dick and heard more than enough from Jason to put a serious damper on any deference he might have had towards the man. But looking at him now, he remembered why most criminals and more than a few heroes were terrified of him.

“I think I know,” Batman said.

*

Roy wanted to take off after Jason as soon as Batman told them where Black Mask was likely to be holed up, but Batman wouldn’t let him. It was full dark and they’d left the Iceberg Lounge staffers in the care of paramedics and made their way downtown. Now they were standing around with their thumbs up their asses on a random rooftop, with Batman coordinating the rest of the Batfamily over comms while Roy paced.

“The longer we wait, the more likely it is that Black Mask will kill him before we get there,” Roy pointed out. He was _this close_ to throwing down a gas arrow and booking it, but what had worked once on Batman wasn’t likely to work a second time.

“He won’t kill him,” Batman said. “Not right away. I know how Sionis’s mind works. He’ll torture him first.”

Roy swore and started for the edge of the roof. Dick got in front of him.

“Don’t make me fight you, man,” Roy warned.

Dick held up his hands. “I know how you’re feeling,” he said. “We _will_ save him. Just...please?”

Roy’s jaw clenched, but he nodded and turned back around to face Batman. “Fine,” he said. “What are we waiting for?”

“Backup,” Bruce said. “And failsafes. Sionis is angry. He’ll most likely have taken Jason to the scene of their last confrontation.”

“Under GCPD headquarters,” Roy said, nodding. Jason had an abandoned base there, because of _course_ he did. There was nothing his Jaybird loved more than tweaking authority’s tail, even when authority didn’t know he was doing it.

Roy swallowed hard and focused on what Batman was saying.

“But those aren’t the only options,” Batman said. “Batgirl and Signal, you’ll check the Sionis mansion and his old base by the river. Red Robin and Spoiler, the former Black Mask club and the Sionis Tower. Robin and Orphan, you’re with us. Meet us across from GCPD HQ.”

“Don’t think I don’t notice you keeping me as far away from Black Mask as possible, B,” Spoiler said over the comms. “You know he’s not at that janky old club.”

“I don’t, actually, and neither do you, so stay alert,” Batman said. “He nearly killed you once before.”

“Which is why I should be the one to kick his stupid teeth out,” she said, but offered no further protest.

“We’re on route to you, Batman. ETA three minutes,” Robin said. Roy gritted his teeth, imagining what Black Mask could do to Jason in three minutes.

He, Dick, and Batman made their way to the rendezvous point and Orphan and Robin joined them a minute later. “There’s a back entrance through the basement of the neighboring building,” Batman said. “We go in and circle them. Don’t let yourselves be seen, and _don’t_ move until my signal. Got it, Arsenal?”

Roy met his gaze levelly. “I’m not the one with a history of getting Jason killed.”

Even as he said it, he knew it was cruel and unfair. But then, he’d been cruel and unfair all day, hadn’t he? And Jason was paying the price.

And if Batman had ever let Jason come in from the cold, if he’d had the protection of the whole Batfamily and hadn’t had to rely on Roy to keep him safe, if Roy hadn’t been too fucking _stupid_ to know what that what he wanted and what he somehow miraculously had were exactly the same thing…

Batman didn’t even acknowledge that Roy had spoken. “Let’s go,” he said.

Once they reached street level, Dick picked the padlock on the storm cellar and eased it open. They filed in silently, Batman taking point and Orphan in the rear. Roy forced himself to move slowly, quietly, when all he wanted to do was race through the basement and into the next building with an explosive arrow nocked to his bow and pointed at Black Mask’s heart.

The wall that adjoined the basement of GCPD headquarters was lined with industrial metal shelving units, but Batman pressed on one and it swung open, revealing a false wall and a narrow crawlspace behind it. They crept in, navigating in the barely-there glow of a penlight Robin pulled from his utility belt.

At the other end of the crawlspace, Batman released another hidden catch. Slowly, so slowly Roy thought he would scream, Batman eased open a second false wall until he could peek out. He must have seen that it was clear, because he signaled and they followed him through.

The GCPD headquarters basement was surprisingly vast, stretching two stories deep. They were on the upper level, which consisted of a catwalk encircling the perimeter. Below them was a bare concrete floor, a few packing crates and storage containers, and some dusty electronic equipment. They had been wise to move slowly, because there were at least two dozen mooks sitting or standing around, all of them visibly armed.

But Roy barely noticed any of that, because Batman had been right. Black Mask _was_ here.

And so was Jason.

He was dangling from a chain suspended from the ceiling, both hands cuffed above his head, just high enough that his toes could touch the ground but not support any of his weight. If his shoulders weren’t dislocated, they still had to be screaming in agony. His face was a mass of bruises, both eyes blackened and blood streaming from his nose. He was shirtless and Roy could see welts and cuts all over his torso, angry red marks that would soon turn purple and green, even what looked like cigarette burns.

Black Mask stood in front of him, sleeves rolled up, holding a bloody knife. It was hard to read expressions on his skull-like face, but Roy could hear him laughing.

“Now isn’t this nice?” he said. “You and me together again, just like old times. You broke my heart when you went away, Jason, really.”

Jason mumbled something that sounded like “Sorry, not sorry.”

“You know, I can’t really remember why I’m so angry with you,” Black Mask said. “Whatever you did to my brain...well, sometimes I just get so _confused_. So I think I’ll just keep carving you up until I remember.” He stepped closer. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you alive as long as it takes.”

Roy didn’t remember drawing a regular-tipped arrow and putting it to the string. One minute he was cataloguing Jason’s injuries with his heart in his throat, and the next he was drawing his bow, sighting along the shaft to its target. All it would take was one arrow through the eye, and Black Mask would never hurt Jason again—

He released the string. In the same instant, a batarang struck his bow, fouling his aim, and the arrow grazed Black Mask’s shoulder instead.

“What the—?” Black Mask said, grabbing at his bleeding shoulder, then looked up at the second level. “Bats! Shoot them!”

“Go!” Batman roared as Black Mask’s mooks reached for their weapons and started shooting. “Arsenal! No killing!”

It wasn’t a warning Roy would normally have needed, but he couldn’t help cursing Batman under his breath. It would have been _over_ , Jason would have been _safe_ , and Roy could have dealt with the legal and moral ramifications later.

The Bats sprang into action, swinging down to the lower level, batarangs flying. Roy stayed where he was, putting an incendiary arrow through the chain keeping Jason suspended off the ground, far enough above Jason’s hands that the heat wouldn’t scorch him. It would melt through the link in just under a minute, freeing him.

He wanted to get down there, grab Jason and get out, but he made himself wait, picking off mooks with nonlethal arrows as long as he had the high ground. Batman was making straight for Black Mask, Dick was headed for Jason, and Robin and Orphan were blurs of motion on opposite sides of the room, laying a goon flat with every blow.

Once he was out of useful arrows, he shot a grapple line to the lower level and joined the fray, making his way toward Jason. The incendiary arrow finally did its job; the chain broke, and Jason crumpled to the floor, clearly too weak to stay on his feet. At least he’d be less likely to catch a stray bullet down there, but it had to have hurt. Roy would apologize later—for a lot of things—but first he had to get to him, he had to _help_ him…

A glint of light on metal caught his eye. Black Mask had pulled a gun from somewhere and was holding Batman at bay with it.

“So many Bats, all here for my lovely little Jason,” he said. “Why is that? I think I knew, once, but I can’t quite remember…”

“Put it down, Roman,” Batman growled.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Black Mask said. “I’m not letting you take him back. Either he’s mine, or he’s no one’s.”

And he leaned past Batman and shot Jason.

“NO!” Roy shouted, but Batman was already moving, taking advantage of Black Mask’s distraction to spring forward and clock him in the jaw. Black Mask dropped, the gun falling from his limp fingers, but Roy didn’t care.

“I’ll kill him,” he said, reaching for an arrow. The quarters were too close to loose it, but he could _stab_ him, he could put that arrow _plenty_ of places that meant Roman Sionis would never open his eyes again. “I’ll kill him, I’ll fucking put him in the _ground_ , you don’t care about Jason but I do—”

“Arsenal, stop!” Batman said, grabbing him, and Roy fought him, knew he would lose but couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“All he fucking wanted was for you to avenge him and you _wouldn’t_ , let me do it, let me give him this, _goddammit—!_ ”

“Stand down or I will put you down,” Batman said, and Roy screamed his rage and fear and grief, didn’t even know what he was saying anymore, and he saw the fist coming at him but couldn’t move out of the way in time, and then everything went black.

*

Roy woke up with a pounding headache and a sick feeling that something terrible had happened. He stretched his hand across the mattress, reaching for Jason, and found nothing.

Then he remembered.

His eyes flew open—or one did, because the other was swollen half-shut. “Fuck,” he said, and then winced at the way the sound echoed inside his skull.

“Welcome back,” said a familiar but totally unexpected voice.

Roy pushed himself up enough that he could see who it was. Spoiler—well, Stephanie now, probably, since she was wearing civvies and scrolling through her phone—was sitting in an armchair by the window. He looked around and realized that he was in the guest bedroom he’d been given the last time he’d slept at the manor, when he and Jason—

“Jason.” His voice came out raw.

“He’s alive,” Stephanie said, and Roy was glad he was still mostly lying down, because the sudden rush of relief left him dizzy. “Black Mask is a fucking terrible shot, I guess, because he just got him in the leg. Jason’s beat to hell, of course, which is extremely on brand for him. He needed a lot of stitches, he’s got a couple of cracked ribs, and his wrists and shoulders are a wreck. But nothing that won’t heal.”

Roy pressed a hand to his mouth, blinking fast, and Stephanie’s expression softened. “There’s water and painkillers on the nightstand if you need them,” she said. “Take your time.”

She went back to her phone. Roy got himself under control, then reached for the water and the aspirin. They would take a few minutes to kick in, but even the cold water was a blessing, the way he felt right now.

He set the empty glass back down. “So they assigned you to babysit me?”

Stephanie looked up from her phone again. “We’ve been taking shifts. Dick wanted someone to tell you about Jason as soon as you woke up. And, uh, Bruce didn’t want you wandering around the manor. But not really caring what Bruce wants is sort of _my_ brand, so…” She stood up. “Knock yourself out. I’m going home.”

“Yeah. Uh, Stephanie?” he said. “Thanks for telling me.”

She paused in the doorway. “You heard what Bruce said on the comms, about me and Black Mask. What he did to Jason...he did that to me once. Worse, really. And I know the rules, and I know it wasn’t for me, but…” Her gaze met his, as serious as he’d ever seen her. “Thanks for trying to kill him.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, just as serious.

She nodded, and left the room.

Roy forced himself out of bed and into the bathroom, where he assessed the damage. His eye certainly wasn’t pretty, but he’d had worse, and frequently at that. He carefully splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth with another toothbrush from Alfred’s well-stocked medicine cabinet, trying to make himself look and feel less like something dead found by the side of the road.

Jason’s door was open, but his room was empty and undisturbed. Roy pulled on a clean T-shirt and pair of sweatpants that someone—Dick, probably—had left in his guest room and wandered the manor, which was so quiet it echoed. It was only a little after seven in the morning and they’d been out late; everyone was probably still asleep.

Well, almost everyone. As Roy walked into the study, the grandfather clock swung open and Alfred stepped out, looking tired and drawn. His sleeves were rolled up and—Roy couldn’t help noticing—there were stray bloodstains on his shirt. He must have been working on Jason all night.

“Good morning, Mr. Harper,” he said when he saw Roy. “I trust you are no worse for wear after your excursion last night.”

“I’ll live,” Roy said, a little ruefully. “Is Jason...can I…?”

Alfred held the panel behind the clock open. “He is sleeping, and I would ask you not to wake him. But you can see him if you wish.”

Roy caught the panel so that Alfred didn’t have to hold it. “You spent all night patching him up, didn’t you? And it’s hardly the first time.” Alfred inclined his head slightly, an agreement. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

Alfred had never been as impassive as, say, Bruce, but Roy had rarely seen him anything but deadpan. It made the faint smile he gave Roy now mean more. “I should say the same to you, Mr. Harper.”

He left, and Roy made his way down the uneven stone steps to the Batcave. As he approached the main level, a spot of white resolved into Jason, lying on a narrow cot that looked unsettlingly like a gurney and draped in a white sheet. Batman—Bruce—sat beside him, still in costume but with his cowl pushed back and his head bowed. He looked… _old_ , Roy realized with a start, old and very tired.

He raised his head as Roy approached. “Arsenal.”

“How is he?” Roy asked. Not that he couldn’t see for himself. There were bandages visible under the edge of the sheet, and Jason’s face was swollen and discolored with bruises to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. Despite his injuries and the fact that he was asleep, he still seemed to be scowling, like he was ready to pick a fight as soon as he opened his eyes.

Fuck, Roy loved him so much.

“Sleeping,” Bruce said. “He’ll be in pain when he wakes up, but it could have been much worse.”

With a hot rush of shame, Roy remembered everything he’d said last night, everything he’d thrown in Bruce’s face. “Listen, Bruce...what I said about this being your fault, about Jason’s death…”

Bruce met his gaze levelly, his expression so stoic that Roy’s temper flared again. He knew Bruce loved Jason, or he wouldn’t have gotten so angry at Roy last night; wouldn’t be sitting here keeping vigil by Jason’s side. Why couldn’t the bastard _bend_ a little, just once? Why couldn’t he _show_ Jason he loved him when Jason wasn’t at death’s door?

Roy lifted his chin. He’d gotten over being intimidated by Batman before he was old enough to drive. “I think Jason deserves better than what you’ve given him. I think they _all_ deserve better. But I was out of line there, and I apologize.”

Bruce looked back down at Jason. “Of course he deserves better,” he said, startling Roy. “He always has.”

Roy wasn’t sure what to do with the fight he’d expected taken away from him. “Right,” he said. “Well.” He wanted to stay, wanted to stroke Jason’s hair until the frown faded from his face and to be there when he opened his eyes, but he was clearly intruding. He turned to go.

“Arsenal.”

Roy stopped.

“Thank you for watching Jason’s back.”

Roy swallowed and didn’t turn around. “I will as long as he wants me to,” he said, and hoped that Jason would still want him to when he woke up.

*

It was an awful day.

Roy wandered around the manor like a ghost, exploring wings he never been in and poking his head into countless rooms shrouded in dustcloths. Hunger eventually drove him to the kitchen, where he ate a furtive bowl of cereal and then washed and dried his bowl and spoon and put them back where he’d found them, hoping he hadn’t just broken some unknown house rules.

He drifted into Jason’s old room and spent some time looking at the books Jason had picked for his shelves all those years ago, remembering a brash and fearless kid with a quick smile and the way the sun had seemed to darken when they’d lost him, even though Roy had barely known him then. He fell asleep on top of the covers of Jason’s bed and woke up to find that a cat had appeared out of nowhere and was sleeping contentedly beside him.

Dick found him sitting on Jason’s bed, scratching the cat under its chin as it purred. “Hey,” Dick said. “How are you doing?”

Roy shrugged. “How long have you guys had a cat?”

“Few years. Damian named him Alfred. I _think_ it’s a compliment,” Dick said. “Have you had any food today?”

“Does a bowl of cereal eaten hunched over the kitchen sink like a criminal count?”

Dick laughed. “Come on, Alfred woke up and made soup. You can even sit down while you eat it.”

Roy felt a little more human after a couple of hearty bowls of white bean soup, fragrant with rosemary, and several pieces of freshly baked bread. “How does Alfred have time to keep you all in one piece, clean this enormous house, and cook like this?” he asked, pushing his empty bowl away.

“I have been wondering that since childhood. I suspect there’s actually three of him,” Dick said, then tilted his head at Roy. “You kind of lost it last night, you know.”

Roy picked apart the last piece of his bread. “Yeah.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Jason getting kidnapped.”

“I should have been there,” Roy said.

“Yeah, and maybe you would have gotten killed. Or maybe you would have gone in late to work or met me for dinner or whatever, and things would have happened exactly like they did.” Dick reached across the table and stilled Roy’s hands, still picking the bread into crumbs. “We got him back, and he’ll recover. That’s the important part.”

“Maybe it wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t there,” Roy said, even though he didn’t believe that for a second. “But the things I said to him...fuck. How long was he hanging there, thinking no one would come for him because… _shit_.”

He pulled his hand free from Dick’s to cover his face. “Hey, no, come on,” Dick said, standing up and coming around the table to pull him up into a hug.

Roy let out a shaky breath into Dick’s shoulder, feeling like an idiot. “Sorry,” he managed. “It’s been...a _really_ shitty twenty-four hours.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Dick patted Roy’s back. “It’ll be okay. Really.”

Roy closed his eyes and let himself voice the final, lesser fear, the one hidden beneath the fears for Jason’s safety and recovery. “What if he won’t forgive me? What if he doesn’t…”

Didn’t want Roy the way Roy wanted him. The way no one ever wanted Roy.

Dick paused. “I don’t know,” he said finally. Roy appreciated that he hadn’t rushed in with a platitude. “But I’ll say this: he’s a lot more forgiving than he pretends to be.”

Roy nodded against Dick’s shoulder and let himself cling for another minute. A distant part of him marveled at how different this would have felt just a day ago, when he still thought he was hung up on Dick. Now all he wanted from his oldest friend was assurance he couldn’t give, assurance that Jason would…“take him back” wasn’t the right phrase, because Roy had never let Jason have him before, not really. “Take a chance,” maybe.

Someone cleared their throat.

Roy looked over Dick’s shoulder to find Jason standing in the kitchen doorway, looking pale and swaying a little on his feet. “Jason!”

Jason sagged against the doorframe. “Afternoon.”

“You idiot, what are you doing up?” Dick asked, letting go of Roy and helping Jason to a chair.

Jason sank into it with a wince. “Coffeemaker in the cave’s for shit,” he said. “Hey, next time I almost die, don’t put me underground, okay?”

His tone was too droll; it gave him away. _Shit._ Roy had been there for enough of Jason’s nightmares to know what waking up underground after a beating would do to him. Why hadn’t someone been with him to assure him it was okay, that he wasn’t in his coffin or the Pit again? Why hadn’t _Roy_ been with him?

“Deal,” Dick said, and glanced at Roy. “I’m gonna...go check on Bruce. Roy, you can make Jason some coffee, right?”

It was blatantly obvious that he was giving them privacy, but Roy supposed a guy couldn’t be that handsome, friendly, good at backflips, _and_ a good actor besides. “Yeah, go,” he said.

Dick nodded. “I’m glad we got you back, Little Wing,” he said to Jason, who gave him the finger. Dick laughed and walked away.

Which left Roy alone with Jason. Roy panicked and turned to the coffeemaker on the counter, which as far as he knew didn’t have very good reason to hate him right now. “... _Can_ I make Jason some coffee?” he asked. “This thing is like the fucking space station.”

“Grounds are in the cabinet above you. Fill the thing on the left with water, hit the button with the mug icon on it,” Jason said. His words were a little slurred, probably because of how swollen his mouth and jaw were. “I don’t need a fucking mocha frap whatever.”

“Right.” Roy fumbled with the stupid machine until it seemed like he’d gotten it right, then hit the button Jason had described. The machine beeped, the scent of coffee brewing hit the air, and he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer.

He sat down in a chair next to Jason’s, not quite close enough to touch. His fingers itched for the contact he wasn’t allowed. Not yet. “...Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Jason’s face was hard to read under the bruises. His eyes beneath their swollen lids were a soft gray-blue. “Like I’m going to be pissing blood for the next few days. How the hell do you think I feel?”

Okay, so it had been a stupid question. “Fair enough.”

“Nice shiner,” Jason said, nodding toward Roy’s eye. “You get that from Black Mask or one of his goons?”

Roy shook his head. “Bruce, actually.”

Jason blinked. “What?”

“I tried to kill Black Mask,” Roy said. “Bruce didn’t take it well.”

Jason stared at him. “You don’t kill.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t.” Roy’s jaw tightened. He had a lot of regrets about the last twenty-four hours. Trying to put Roman Sionis in the ground wasn’t one of them. “I told you once, Jaybird. Someone hurts you like that, or even _tries_...they don’t get to meet the nice version of me.”

For a moment there was something in those stormy eyes that Roy thought he recognized—and then Jason looked away and the moment was gone. “Looks like you and Dick worked things out.”

“What?” Roy said, and then realized. The _hug_ , the stupid hug, Jason must think… “Oh, no. No, we’re not...I mean, we talked, but we aren’t...I don’t… _shit_.” He raked a hand through his hair, wincing as he jarred his bruised eye socket on the way. “Listen. After I left you yesterday, yeah. I went to see Dick. I told him I had feelings for him. And I kissed him.”

There was no expression at all on Jason’s face. Roy would have preferred anything else, even fury.

“It was nothing,” Roy said. “All these years and I felt fucking _nothing_ , except that I was a goddamn idiot. I spent so much time clinging to this stupid adolescent _crush_ like a bad habit, and it was so familiar that I never even realized how long I’ve been falling in love with you. At least since you kissed me. Maybe since Qurac. Shit, Jason, I don’t know.”

“...What?” Jason said, the implacable mask faltering. His voice was a little ragged.

Roy was too far away, suddenly. He slid off of his chair, onto his knees, reaching for Jason’s hands—gently, gently, since they were still bandaged from the cuffs. “I love you,” he said. “I’m so stupid crazy in love with you, Jaybird. It wasn’t just sex, not for me, it was...god, it was fucking everything, being with you. All the bullshit I said yesterday, I didn’t mean a word of it. I went to the club to find you, to apologize, and when you weren’t there…” The fear rose up in his throat again, which was stupid because Jason was _here_ , he was _fine_ , but it had been such a near thing.

Jason looked...not happy, which was more than Roy probably had the right to hope for. Confused, maybe. “But you...I thought you and Dick…”

“I don’t want him,” Roy said. “I haven’t wanted him for a long time, not really. I want _you_. I want your dirty mouth and your stupid bedhead in the morning and your cold-ass feet at night. I want the way you always do what you think is right and not what other people _tell_ you is right. I want these bloody hands.” He turned Jason’s hands over and kissed his palms, because he didn’t know how else to make it clear. “I know we said it was just going to be sex and it’s okay if you don’t want me back, but I need you to know that you aren’t a compromise for me. You aren’t my second choice. You’re everything.”

He looked up. Jason’s throat was working, and Roy didn’t know how people could say gray eyes were cold, because Jason’s were the warmest things he’d ever seen.

“You’re a goddamn sap, Harper,” Jason said finally. His voice was still raw. Roy thought that was maybe a good thing. “If you think you’re getting some kind of big dramatic kiss out of this you’re going to have to wait until my face isn’t beat to hell.”

Roy broke out in a grin. “I can wait,” he said, but he pushed up anyway to drop the lightest of kisses to that sulky mouth he adored so much. Jason leaned his forehead against Roy’s, and Roy closed his eyes.

“Hey,” Jason said, very quietly. “You know I’m full of shit, right? When I said it was just physical.”

Roy smiled. “Who’s the sap now?”

“Ugh, still you,” Jason said, but he didn’t move away. “And you were right. About...I wanted Dick to know. Not because...it wasn’t about _him_. I just…” His hands tightened on Roy’s, so much it had to be hurting him. “I wanted you to be mine.”

At that, Roy pulled back enough to look Jason in the eyes. Let Jason call him sappy; this mattered. “I am,” he promised.

Jason’s mouth was too swollen to smile, but Roy could tell he was trying anyway. “Okay,” he said. “Good.”

*

Alfred insisted that Jason stay at the manor for medical care for the better part of a week. Jason complained about it endlessly, but he was visibly stronger every day. The bruises on his face broke out in a riot of hideous colors, but at least the swelling receded until he was the right shape again.

The fact that Alfred told Roy that Jason wasn’t to indulge in any _strenuous activities_ for an additional two weeks let Roy know that the fact that he’d been sleeping in Jason’s room and not his own hadn’t gone unnoticed, not that he’d really expected it to. No one else said anything, although Dick had developed a really annoying habit of giving them a big thumbs up every time he saw them. Roy was looking forward to Jason feeling strong enough to try to deck him for it.

But now they were back in their apartment, which felt small and quiet and strange after the events of the past week. Roy flung himself down across the couch and grunted when Jason kneed him in the side. “Move over.”

“Ugh.” Roy pulled himself back up to a seated position and scooted over, and Jason took the opportunity to sprawl across the rest of the couch, his head in Roy’s lap. “Wait, how come _you_ get to lie down?”

“Because I’m a delicate invalid and you have to be nice to me.”

“Delicate my ass, you’re like twelve hundred pounds of pure muscle,” Roy grumbled, but he was pretty sure the way he was stroking Jason’s curls off his forehead gave away that he really didn’t mind. Oh, well.

Jason smirked up at him. His eyes were almost purely green today, or maybe it was just the purplish bruises around them making them look that way. “Oh, so Suzie Su called me. All the new furniture came in for the Lounge and we should be ready to reopen next week.”

“That’s good,” Roy said, and then caught the flicker in Jason’s expression. “Isn’t it?”

“I’m thinking of giving the Lounge to the Sus,” Jason said. “I mean, I got what I wanted out of it.”

“My ass,” Roy said sagely.

“Fuck you.”

“Sorry, Alfred said not for two more weeks.”

“You are a horror show.” But Jason was visibly trying not to laugh. “ _Anyway._ I know Black Mask wasn’t the only game in town and the Lounge could still be useful, but…”

He didn’t have to explain it to Roy. They’d been happy there, for a while, but Roy would be perfectly content to never set foot in that building again, never relive the moment where he’d found the office splattered with blood and Jason gone.

“Give it to the Sus,” Roy said. “They can keep passing intel on if they feel like it. Make Damian their contact, I would _love_ to see him and Suzie interact.” He studied Jason’s face. “You want to leave Gotham, don’t you? You’ve got that wanderlust-y look.”

Jason hesitated. “You came here to do something specific,” he said. “Something stable. Something that _pays_.”

“No, I didn’t, you idiot.” Roy leaned down to kiss his forehead. “So where are we going next?”

“I don’t even know,” Jason admitted.

“Take me to Paris, then, you’re so worried about keeping me,” Roy suggested. “Buy me another very fancy dinner and then feel me up in the Louvre.”

Jason gave in and cracked up. “You’re all class, Harper.”

“You know it.” Roy bent down again, this time to kiss Jason on the mouth, long enough that he was really starting to hate the idea of waiting two weeks by the time he pulled away. He hated it more when he saw how Jason’s eyes had gone all hazy and content on him. “Seriously. Wherever you want to go, I’m there.”

“Even if it’s shitty?”

“ _Especially_ if it’s shitty.”

“All right,” Jason said, reaching for Roy’s hand. His eyes were so green. Roy couldn’t wait to see what color they were tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day following. “Let’s jump and see where we land.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, they accomplished emotional honesty! And they only had to almost die once to get there! Proud of them, tbh.
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with these two bing-bongs this long. 😊

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi on tumblr!](https://pluckyredhead.tumblr.com/)


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